Introduction

On an initiative taken by the Professional Affairs Committee Chaired by the President Prof. (Mrs) N. Ratnayake a survey of the Engineering profession was conducted among the engineering professionals during the month of April 2018. The task was led by Vice President Mr. Manamperi and Eng. Dr. Asoka Korale with input from the committee members with technical and distribution support from the IESL IT department and secretariat.

The survey was conducted via a web link that was sent out to the IESL membership using the Survey Monkey online survey tool configured by the IESL IT administrator. Those that responded were directed to the Survey Monkey online survey website which contained a series of questions prepared by members of the IESL professional affairs committee. The responses were collated and a report has been prepared.

The survey will help to inform the IESL on the state of the engineering profession and the views of the engineers on matters impacting the profession. The insights gained will be used to help the institution to formulate strategies that benefit the engineering profession, guide government policy and inform the public. It is planned to make the survey a biannual affair where the opinions of the engineers will be canvassed on matters of concern to the engineers. This survey though directed primarily at IESL members was also open to those engineers who are not IESL members. Of the responses, 98% were from current members of the IESL .The response rates from each class of membership are given in Table 1.

The response rate was approximately uniform across the membership classes for which there were significant numbers of responses indicating that the views contained in the survey broadly reflect characteristics of the overall membership of the Institution. Since student members cannot be in employment except in rare circumstances their views are not accounted for in this survey.

The survey evaluated five broad areas including the knowledge of engineers on international trade agreements, details of foreign professionals employed by local companies, characteristics of the organizations where respondents are employed, income and work related aspects and the training and development requirements of the engineers. The main results are summarized in this article.

Knowledge of Trade Agreements The engineering profession is impacted by the GOSL decision to enter in to service liberalization agreements with foreign countries which will allow foreign professionals to enter the workforce and allow foreign companies to bid for local contracts. In light of this the survey sought to ascertain the views of the engineers on this important topic.

Of the respondents 11% stated they are very knowledgeable of trade agreements. Of this proportion 9% are fellows, 36% are members and 51% are associate members. However due to the relative proportions of each membership class responding to the survey it was found that the higher membership classes have a greater likelihood of having a very good knowledge of trade agreements. Of the respondents 64% know very little of trade agreements while 19% don’t know anything of the subject.

The knowledge of trade agreements doesn’t increase very much with increasing work experience rising from 9% among those with less than 5 years of experience to 16% among those with more than 20 years of experience. The proportion of engineers who know nothing about trading agreements decreases from 27% for those with less than 5 years’ experience to 12% for those with more than 20 years’ experience.