Engineer Shortage??? Why???

IEEE sounds the alarm, but the situation might be less bleak than it seems

According to Wanda Reder, president of theIEEE Power & Energy Society, the Green Economy development plan of US president Barack Obama will be impossible to effect due to a shortage of electrical engineers. In response to this, IEEE founded the U.S. Power and Energy Engineering Workforce Collaborative. This workgroup published its first report in April, drawing a very dark picture of the situation. Though the authors clearly have some good arguments, one must wonder if the situation is really as bad as they make it out. In the past, workforce shortages in certain professional domains have usually been solved automatically by the law of supply and demand.　　

(http://www.leonardo-energy.org/green-economy-risk-due-engineer-shortage)

Engineer Shortage Puts Green Economy and Smart Grid at Risk

Amy Fischbach

April 21, 2009 — As a cornerstone of his energy, environment and economic plans, President Barack Obama urges the country to transform its energy system to make it greener and smarter. But a growing shortage of electric power and energy engineers will make the path to reaching that vision rocky. Due to the aging electrical engineering workforce and educators, there may not be enough engineering support to design, build, operate and maintain the kind of reliable electric energy system that is required in the future.

(http://blog.tdworld.com/briefingroom/2009/04/21/engineer-shortage-puts-green-economy-and-smart-grid-at-risk/)

There seems to be the same problem everywhere in the world!!! Yes, here, too at PTM, we are running out of electrical engineers!!! Young ones especially. For 6 years we could not recruit any young electrical engineers and this April, there came only one guy finally, but he is so young (21!!) that he has a long way to go still.

So my boss and I went engineer-hunting to this tech-college in Tokyo the other day. There was a job fair at this college that some medium-small companies gathered together to have interview with the Senior students, who have not found jobs yet.

It is a pitty that those students in electrical department do not know how precious, valuable, worthwhile they are...they are so-called "golden eggs" to us, who are desparately looking for electrical engineers. All of the students we interview, well only 5 or 6 though, did not have any clue what we do, what MEP consulting engineers are. We were so eager to explain about our jobs to those students...we would have kidnapped them literally, but we tried not to...haha.

I was very anxcious to know if any of those guys were insterested in the job. Then some days later, one student came to our office to check out the working environment (which we could not really pround of...). This was the boy (to me, he is a boy...) that my boss and I really liked when we met at the job fair. We thought this would be our one-way love, but it was not. He is very much interested in our job!!!

I used to think, even though I majored political science in educational administration in Grad school, that it has something to do with the Japanese government...it should be all their fault that we lack better science/math education at school so that there is this engineer shortage. But since this is happening many many places in the world, who's fault it this? Why are we running out of electrical engineers then?

I am sure there should be many mixed reasons for each situation in each country, maybe not only on education level, but also some other reasons. Maybe I can find out the background sometime, but I do not have those gutts anymore after I left Grad school...I am now too lazy to do those researches!

Do anyone know why and how we can fix this problem

Are you engineers?

http://www.jobengine.jp/rd.html?url=http://hp.rhp.jp/~ptmtokyo/bosyu_ichiran.html&rf=/estate/survey/cps.html%3Fc%3Dt101e5%26hpimg%3D1%26and_or%3D&cid=66021&aid=23907&type=nps&lid=01&adp_mid=767888&adp_lid=1

Shangri-la Hotel Open!!!

Shangri-la Hotel Tokyo successfully opened on March 2 2009 and has begun their journey!!!

(That's what they said on the banner, "Our journey begins on 2 March 2009!)

This means one of the long-term giant projects of PTM is finally over and we are all relieved.

We, along with our KOKUNAI (Domestic) Group, have been working on this project since the fall of 2006.... nearly 2 and a half years have passed since then!

We were their MEP consultant, IT consultant, and AV consultant.  Since we designed the M&E systems for their base building that hotel is tenanting (Mori Trust Tower), we were involved in A/A'/B/B' and also C works altogether.  That building has so many footprints of PTM members!!!

Maybe the hotel price is away away expensive for our kind of people to stay so we (at least I) may never be able to afford it on our own, it is always nice to imagine somebody enjoying the facilities that we designed and consulted and picture people complementing the electrical system (or complaining the A/C status!!!).

People grade hotels not only on facilities, but more importantly on hospitality that hotel provide for their guests.  Shangri-la hotel is truly famous for their hospitality and that is why they are ranked as a 5-star world wide hotel.

Maybe it is too much to go vacationing abroad this year due to this recession, yet if you are interested in Shangri-la hospitality and MEP system that they have, why don't you save up your money and go visit the most convenient luxurious hotel (right by Tokyo Station!) in Tokyo?

Personally, I was very much interested in their "CHI Spa", a well-known luxurious relaxation massage course that Shangri-la provides.  Hopefully my boss will treat me the course someday for my hard working in this project!!!

"Touching Room" again!

Here is our lovely secretary, Ms. Arai ... Shinobu-chan!

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A Happy New Year!

After the happy & relaxed holiday with my family, I came back to Tokyo.  It’s nice to see the friendly faces again in the office.  Kotoshimo Yoroshiku.

 

There’s one thing I still regret about the last year.  One day, when I showed some foreign visitors into the meeting room, one of them asked me in Japanese, “Is this room the meeting room (会議室)?  And, what is another room called?”  In my mind, I said to myself, “What a strange question he made!”, but I just answered, “Yes, this room is 会議室, and another room is called 応接室."  He might want to practice Japanese, I thought.  Some days or weeks after while I was visiting this Blog, suddenly his question made sense to me.  He wanted me to call another room as Touching Room!  I had read about the “Touching-Room Incident” before, but it was completely out of my mind then.  I still regret for my stupid answer.  If the visitor comes back to our office in the future, please give me another chance.