Being Brave in the Brave New World

As civil engineering enters the 21st century, there are four issues engineers need to confront in order to improve the profession. These are time, teams, technology and stewardship. In the future, diminishing project completion times will require engineers to develop new methods of time management without sacrificing project quality. In terms of teamwork, project managers will increasingly need to be broad-scale leaders, with the ability to manage people as well as the technical aspects of a project. Engineers should also evaluate technical issues, focusing on the ethical implications of doing what is only technically correct instead of looking at the overall project. Finally, civil engineers should explore the profession's ethical responsibilities, questioning what role civil engineers should play in terms of stewardship in the social, global and political arenas.