AwesomeKe: Quality training and education to help engineering industry grow

The road to professional competence starts with basic education in engineering universities and colleges. To enroll in an engineering class, there’s a period of at least 4 years and one takes an average of 8 years to be recognized as an engineer. At least 3000 students join Universities each year whereby about 148 students go through technical institutions annually.

It is noted that in the University degree programs, students have undergone considerable metamorphosis for the last four decades with the aim of responding to the market demand of engineering industry.
In the year 1969, the engineering registration act was enacted through an act of parliament which came up with the establishment of responding to the engineering registration board. To be qualified as an engineer, one must be accredited with full qualifications for the purpose of registration with the Engineers Board of Kenya.

There is need to improve on the University industry with linkages in order to enrich the training of graduates and make them relevant and readily employable, not leaving out the need to employ policies that encourage University staff to participate in University industry privileges.
Equipped facilities, specialized tools and enough staff are the requirements for efficiency in the engineering performance.

The moment a student joins the University or College, he/she is prepared into the course which is very technical and as he continues, the demand of the course becomes high and vigorous in training.
Training doesn’t only involve class work but involvement in laboratories in order to handle real job assignment in the field. Industrial training programs come through with various institutions and companies by taking students as interns and train them on the job.

As much as engineering training is involved, there seem to be critical problems including the decline of quality, lack of relevance to occupational and social realities under enrollment and under funding.
The importance of skills and adequate training cannot be over emphasized to the expertise and technology that differentiate between developed and developing countries such as Kenya.

Training should be formally structured and have desirable attributes that may be expressed in terms of technical and non-technical competence in order to get opportunities to attend courses and seminars on engineering relevant to their specializations to acquire registration process in Kenya. In the Act of 2011,engineers are required to continue with developed engineering process regularly for they are supposed to have the techniques in Engineering and development for the growth in technology as a professional or consulting engineer.

You can watch episodes of #AwesomeKe on NTV every Wednesday after the 9pm news bulletin for more information and indepth studies.