Project Overview

The Engineers of the 21st Century (E21C) Programme is set up to support collaborative research projects with practical outcomes. Typically working with groups of three to five organisations, we will guide and develop a project aimed a tackling some of the tougher challenges of sustainable development.

Once the challenge is set, we will select a project team of future leaders from each of the organisations providing a unique learning and development opportunity for those involved.

If your organisation has a challenge that you think could make a great project, please get in touch.

Background 

The E21C Programme started from the perceived need to accelerate change in the engineering profession to enable it to respond fully and positively to the challenge of sustainable development.

Forum for the Future has identified four critical areas for change if the profession is to respond fully and positively to the challenge of sustainable development - the Four Change Challenges:

1. Choosing the sustainability option must become cheaper and easier for clients and contractors;
2. Sustainability thinking and practices must be embedded into the culture of organisations and across different professional groups;
3. Specifying for sustainability criteria in materials and processes must become an effective tool for change (at both demand and supply end of procurement chains); and 
4. The capacity of teachers and trainers to integrate sustainability into courses must be developed quickly.

In 2005 Forum for the Future began a close collaboration with the Royal Academy of Engineering to run a series of projects, carried out by young engineers, to explore different ways of meeting one or more of these challenges. The projects delivered interesting results that provoked debate and bought a new awareness to well-known problems within the engineering profession. 

Building on this success and recognising the new political consensus around the urgency for change, in 2008 Forum for the Future, in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering, is scaling up the impact of this programme. Partners are invited to engage in a collaborative venture that brings together promising young engineers but also senior engineering managers and directors. Guided by the Four Change Challenges, small groups of partners will work together to remove barriers or exploit opportunities for delivering a more sustainable future through engineering.

The projects will comprise or include a significant step change towards sustainability in a product, process or engineering practice and will aim to promote and demonstrate sustainability in all aspects possible. The results of these projects will be promoted actively across industry and the profession.

Together, cross-organisational teams will work on projects to influence the removal of barriers and to grow the opportunities implicit in the previously determined Four Change Challenges. The project teams will be taken through an innovation process (outlined in the diagram below) to help them to explore the problem and work on a useful and relevant outcome

Please read Engineers for Sustainability and Change Challenges for Sustainability for further information. Both are available for download on the left.

For more information on the programme download the E21c programme overview document, or contact Lorna Pelly.