UGPTI Director Studies European Transportation Workforce Development

The Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State University is at the forefront of finding solutions to challenging issues in transportation. UGPTI director Gene Griffin will be the academic representative on a 10-member study panel chosen and sponsored by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials studying European transportation issues.

Griffin will have site visits in Sweden, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, meeting with transportation officials from government, private and academic areas. Because transportation agencies in the United States are grappling with how to hire and retain technical and administration workers, and how to train/retrain those workers to meet changing needs, the panel will investigate European solutions and failures in the same arena.

Griffin and other team members will create a final report with national impact from their visits with public and private highway agencies in Europe. Of particular interest will be how those agencies build and maintain a technical and non-technical staff.

Transportation has become a high tech business, according to Griffin, and finding qualified people to fill positions is more and more difficult. The number of engineering students in the United States has not kept pace with the growing demand. Although there has been a slight upswing in the number of undergraduate engineering students in the U.S., most of the increase is in computer engineering. The number of science and engineering graduate students in the U.S. has fallen for the fifth consecutive year.

Human capital will also be a study topic, focusing especially on the career goals of incoming students and how their needs can be met in the transportation profession. Transportation agencies in the U.S. have shifted from a new construction mode to system preservation, with much of the planning, design and construction work outsourced. This reduced opportunities for hands-on work by engineers and technicians.

Civil engineers have been the backbone of transportation development and planning. Today, civil engineers must also have co-workers skilled in computer engineering, high-tech electronics, regional planning, environmental protection, federal regulations, accounting, management, communications, marketing, economics and other areas.