Sustainability competence — nature or nurture?

As part of the European wide dissemination events for the Engineers 4 Europe (E4E) project, TU Dublin and Engineers Ireland held an in-person panel discussion.

The audience was informed of the outputs of the E4E project and the expert panel convened discussed the development of sustainability competence in engineers. They explored if sustainability is a competence that can be learnt as other engineering skills are learnt, or whether, like marmite, some people will just never get it!

E4E is an Erasmus+ project funded by the European Union with the goal of bridging the gaps between education, training and industry, while operationalising EU competence frameworks (which include GreenComp, DigComp, LifeComp, EntreComp) for engineers.

There are multiple partners (11 full partners and 13 associated partners) from across Europe involved in the E4E project with TU Dublin and Engineers Ireland representing Ireland.

The objective of the symposium was to bring together an expert panel to explore the following questions.

What exactly is sustainability competence, and is it just something else that hard-working engineers and student engineers are being asked to learn?
Is sustainability a competence at all, or is it really an approach or a process that can be adopted or not as required?
Where does sustainability competence fit in with all the other topics that confront us daily, including digital competence; artificial intelligence; transversal skills, EDI, etc.?

Attendees

A little more than 100 attendees showed up to TU Dublin for this event. The attendance demonstrates strong interest in the subject of Sustainable Competence, as well as the credibility of Engineers Ireland at delivering relevant CPD for its members.

Attendees included membership from Engineers Ireland, who generally are engineers within industry roles, TU Dublin engineering faculty and students, and other attendees. These other attendees included international scholars and faculty, other disciplinary faculty, and others from industry.

A register of attendees was generated with most, but not all, attendees signing the register.

Expert panel

A senior panel of experts addressed the topic. The panel speakers were:

Laura Burke, president of Engineers Ireland and director general of the Environmental Protection Agency, Chartered Engineer;
Jennifer Boyer, vice president, sustainability at TU Dublin; architect;
Sharon McManus, group head of sustainability at ESB; former Irish Defence Forces officer, Chartered Engineer;
Cormac Mac Grory, project engineer;
Maeve Martin, master of ceremonies; student and graduate engagement, Engineers Ireland.

It should be noted that Burke and McManus are engineers with significant sustainability track records, while Mac Grory is a 2021 engineering graduate.

As an architect, Boyer has strong sustainability credentials from her industry experience and is also tasked with sustainability education leadership in her executive role at TU Dublin. The biographies for each of the speakers and master of ceremonies are included at the end of this report.

The context, background and welcome for the symposium was provided by Majella Henchion, an E4E Skills Council member, who works in industry and is an experienced and respected Fellow of Engineers Ireland. In her remarks, she made the following points:

In today’s economy and society, engineering is ubiquitous. There is an engineer behind virtually every product and service that we use or deploy in our daily lives. Engineers are crucial to ensure innovation, to contribute to economic growth and to tackle societal challenges such as health and environment.
In the EU, the engineering profession is confronted with structural changes and skill mismatches with increasing gaps in transversal skills, so high in demand by employers. It is a challenge to overcome the distance between the worlds of education and work. The EU, international policy documents and research corroborate those challenges and identify a shortage of 'socially driven engineers', chronically needed to meet EU targets for 2030 and 2050.
The objective of E4E is to foster the innovation and resilience of EU engineers through the acquisition of new competences, including skills, knowledge, attitudes and leadership, with a focus on digital, green, resilience and entrepreneurship, geared by the new requirements of the world of work.

E4E’s activities and related outputs

To define and establish the Engineering Skills Council, a multi-stakeholder EU platform for enhanced dialogue and collaboration between representatives of education, training, industry and employers. This council is now in place;
To design a monitoring methodology to gauge the dynamics, challenges and opportunities of the engineering profession, culminating in the Engineering Skills Strategy the first iteration of which was published in August 2024;
To develop and deliver the E4E Curriculum, an innovative training for transversal competences and skills. Four free micro-credentials concerning skills identified in the European digital, life, sustainability and entrepreneurship competency frameworks (respectively, the DigiComp, LifeComp, GreenComp, and EntreComp frameworks) have come out of this aspect of the project. As this dissemination event was taking place in TU Dublin where the Green Competency credential was developed, our discussion was themed around that competency. That training module focuses on developing knowledge and understanding of corporate sustainability and ESG.

Panel discussion

Maeve Martin introduced the panel to discuss sustainability as a competence: whether it is something engineering educators can nurture through courses like the one developed in TU Dublin; or whether it is innate, in our DNA, just in our nature.

Martin noted that the symposium is intended to be a Q&A session and that she looked forward to hearing from participants and getting them involved in the discussion on this important topic. The MC skilfully guided the panel through a series of questions that explored the subject from several perspectives.

Summary of key points

Generally, all speakers agreed that sustainability is a competence that can be learnt, and that it must be learnt within today’s complex world. One speaker noted that anybody can learn anything, and consequently everybody can learn and develop competence in sustainability. It was suggested that a helpful attribute is that we should all stay curious and ask questions.

It was noted that there is a necessary and valuable broadened role for the modern university in being a place where engineering students can develop practical competences, but also where industry can bring their expertise and contribute to shared learning.

The idea that learning no longer stops with the acquisition of a degree was stressed, and that learning must continue through continuous professional development and lifelong learning was emphasised.

An interesting contrast was evident with Engineers Ireland president Laura Burke making the point that there was no sustainability education when she was in college, with Mac Grory sharing how sustainability was in fact a core part of his curriculum.

It was clear that the modern engineering curriculum addresses sustainability from a more complex perspective than keep cups, metal straws and wind farms; that sustainability is becoming a core value within the engineering curriculum.

It was however also noted during the discussion that while sustainability may not have been called out in the formal primary education of our experienced engineers, many of the tools learnt in their formal education can be directly applied to sustainable design, operation and maintenance across all fields. The key is to help people find that lens through which to look at the problems and opportunities with which they are presented.

It was noted that sustainability is part of a value system, and that systems thinking can help with this. Everybody has a role to play and knowing that role through a systems-thinking approach is valuable.

Resilience and autonomy are key skills within the sustainability competence. Reflecting her military officer background, McManus noted that plans are nothing, but planning is everything. Sustainability is evolving, and it is important to keep up; ie, the sustainability plan may have to change, but the importance of planning remains consistent.

The evolving and positive role of the European Union was noted, especially regarding Ireland’s development of awareness and knowledge to address sustainability matters. With Ireland’s joining of the EU, environmental issues have come to the fore, and ‘environmental’ now encompasses the environment and also health and well-being. If it once was considered a ‘fad’ sustainability is well on the way to being internalised across Irish society.

This concept of internalisation was also noted by Boyer, in that sustainability needs to be embedded within education programmes, rather than as add-on initiatives; that we should seek to educate everybody within the university system (not just engineering students) and as quickly as we can. Scale-up and up-skill. To help with this, micro-credentials are a key enabler.

The important role of Engineers Ireland was noted by more than one panellist, with several relevant points being made. These are that Engineers Ireland has sustainability encompassed in the core programme outcomes (POs), by the inclusion of a programme area (PA) dedicated to sustainability (PA7) for the educational standard of chartered engineer; that Engineers Ireland has a sustainability strategy which aims to ensure engineers play their part in engineering the transition to a sustainable society; that Engineers Ireland has added Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv) to the list of titles it offers for its members (like the Chartered Engineer title, this requires members to prove their competence across a range of competencies as part of the assessment process, in this case sustainability related competencies); and that Engineers Ireland has a range of current and relevant CPD programmes for its members on many aspects of sustainability. Engineers Ireland nurtures the sustainability competences of its members!

Mac Grory noted the impact of change, and that we need to be advocates for change, and seek alignment of our organisational values to sustainability goals.

The ‘itch of innovation’ can be our friend in our sustainability journey, and that engineering is inherently sustainable if done right.

Launch of CPD Micro-credential

Dr Martin Barrett, TU Dublin (pictured), introduced the audience to the E4E learning portal and launched the four free micro-credentials that focus on DigiComp, LifeComp, GreenComp, and EntreComp.

As the Greencomp micro-credential was developed by TUDublin, Dr Barrett outlined how this micro-credential demonstrates how GreenComp (the European sustainability competence framework) competencies can be used to develop a sustainability strategy for an organisation.

The micro-credential was developed by Dr Barrett and his colleague Dr Keith Sunderland, and 750 learners have registered to take this course to date.

Acknowledgements

This event was made possible by EU support through the Erasmus+ funded Engineers 4 Europe project. It was organised by Aidan O’Flaherty¹, Dee Kehoe¹, Majella Henchion^1,3,4, Martin Barrett², Keith Sunderland^1,2, and Mike Murphy^2,4.