Last Monday was the start of New Zealand's first "Engineering Week". It is designed to bridge a gap: an estimated shortage of over 500 newly-trained engineers per year.
In Wellington, four organisations combined to introduce 150 students to engineering work opportunities. See half-page article by Laura Dooney in the August 9, 2016, Kapi-Mana News (a weekly newspaper published in Porirua).
A Beca manager, Mike Kerr, said:
- "Engineering is involved in all of the bits of our daily interaction with the world, people misconstrue it as just being ... buildings and roads, and it's absolutely not."
Engineer Nina Ives said that engineering was for anyone who wanted to make a difference to the world around them, and mentioned misconceptions that girls would be less interested than boys in engineering and that it was only for students at the top of the class.
At least one Wellington secondary school includes in its career education biennial visits by engineering firms and former students, to talk about the subject.