Al-Jolo: Employers are finding it difficult to recruit skilled professionals.
By Ramesh Mathew
Staff Reporter
The Gulf region's engineering sector is facing a host of mounting challenges, including an acute shortage of qualified professionals, a senior industry professional said on Wednesday.
Qatar Society of Engineers (QSE) chairman Ahmed Jassim al-Jolo observed that even though the ongoing infrastructural developments in the region required the services of a large number of qualified and competent engineering professionals along with skilled workers, many employers were finding it difficult to recruit and deploy trained hands in adequate numbers.
The shortage of skilled professionals, said al-Jolo, had adversely affected the infrastructural developments in the region, including in Qatar, where a large number of mega projects are in different stages of execution.
Qatar, he said, was executing many major industrial, infrastructural and residential projects, including Qatar Rail, New Doha Port, expressways and a number of utility ventures in water and electricity.
However, owing to the shortage of skilled workforce being faced in the country some of the major projects are going way behind the schedule, he said.
Projects also encounter managerial, financial, technical and mechanical challenges as well, according to al-Jolo, who is a senior member of the country's Professional Engineers Committee.
These included issues such as project financing, effective and efficient management and shortage of raw materials in the market, he said while attributing delay in some of the major road projects to them.
Speaking about the Gulf Engineering Forum to be held in Doha next month, al-Jolo said the presence of a number of the region's policy makers and senior engineering professionals from the GCC states would make the deliberations lively and interesting. "We, the region's engineers, would be able to understand each other's ongoing priorities and interests better, when we sit across a table," he said.
The priority projects in the infrastructure, utilities and transport sectors would figure prominently in the conference which would feature about 30 work papers, each of which having a bearing on the region's states.
Along with the challenges, the achievements in member states will also be highlighted. "Among the main topics to be discussed are early delivery of electricity and water, best practices in infrastructure management, global experience in providing human resources to engineering projects and technical and professional development for engineers."
A member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, al-Jolo is a founding member of the Qatar General Green Building Council, which is one of the most active engineers forums of the country.
