From building bridges to running bay street

As companies globalize, engineers are also being called upon to solve management problems and figure out how to get international offices to work in tandem. Traditional disciplines like industrial engineering, which was developed to meet the challenges of high-volume production and industrialization, are being revamped to meet the needs of the global economy and address issues around data mining and information technology.

For this reason, Adel Sedra, dean of the faculty of engineering at Waterloo, says the school recently launched a bachelor of applied science in management engineering. “This is the contemporary version of what used to be called industrial engineering,” says Sedra, “but there’s a lot more management in it.” Students in the program learn how to design management systems for any industry, from manufacturing to health care, in addition to picking up the business skills they’d usually get in a commerce degree.

Similarly, McMaster University has a well-established five-year engineering and management program that integrates the technical engineering education with business courses, and the university is now introducing an entrepreneurship stream for students. The idea is that many of the most successful businesses—Apple, BMW, Microsoft—have been built on devices created by engineers, which then prosper because of workers who understand the fundamentals of both technology and business. Plus, says McMaster engineering dean David Wilkinson, “A lot of our young graduates are very interested in starting their own businesses, and are much less intimidated about entrepreneurship than previous generations.”

Meanwhile, other universities are also encouraging their engineering students to go out and start businesses of their own. At the University of Victoria, a new program was introduced that allows engineering students at the master’s level to bring a company from concept to launch over 20 months, while earning their master of applied science degree and business diploma. Dean Thomas Tiedje says, “Engineers are trained to make things that are useful, so they’re the natural people to get involved in this type of [entrepreneurial] activity.” The university is also starting a joint master’s of engineering and M.B.A. this year, which is part of what Tiedje sees as “a natural progression from engineering to business.”

Nearby at the University of British Columbia, a campus-wide initiative called entrepreneurship@UBC was dreamed up to inspire and support young entrepreneurs, and engineers can partake in this innovative fervour by enrolling in the “new venture design” course, which gives them the skills—from writing a business plan to doing market research—to start their own enterprise.

One former student in the course, Winnie Lai, co-founded Clinicbook.ca before she finished her degree in engineering physics last spring. The website helps Canadians find health care through a universal directory, and she is currently developing an online booking system for dental appointments to launch in Greater Vancouver at the end of October. “Instead of calling your dentist to book an appointment,” explains the 22-yearold, “people can see the dentist’s schedule, and make the appointment at any time, even after hours when the clinic is closed.”

Lai is also getting ready to present her business idea to Silicon Valley investors—an opportunity she was awarded through entrepreneurship@UBC. But how did engineering physics prepare her for running an online venture? “Going through a program like engineering forces you to learn independently,” she says. “We’re not spoon fed, so we had to do research and develop strong analytical skills.” Plus, she adds: “Entrepreneurs and engineers are very similar in that they are both there to solve problems, and to make the world a better place to live in.”