Let the building begin

Want to be part of the Olympics but not a top athlete? Then creating the stadiums could be a golden opportunity, says Caitlin Davies

hen it was announced that London had won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics, it wasn't just the bid organisers who were quaffing champagne. There were an awful lot of excited construction engineers as well. For, if the city is to get its new sports stadiums and aquatic centre, someone needs to turn these designs into reality - and to do so on time and within budget.

Enter the construction engineer, a role similar to that of a civil engineer, but with more time spent on site alongside the rest of the workforce. "The Olympic stadium will be flooded by civil and construction engineers, because it will need a mix of both," says Ron McCaffer, professor of construction management at Loughborough University.

Civil engineering graduates tend to become design engineers or work within construction companies. But once within supervisory roles, they can, in effect, be called construction engineers. These days, there are also degrees specifically in construction engineering, which are less maths-based than civil engineering. Graduates move into jobs concerned more with building construction than with design, with starting salaries between £20,000 and £28,000.

Construction engineers need to combine technical and management skills. They are in charge of planning and managing the construction of structures - whether these are city tower blocks, chemical process plants or stadiums. And there is no shortage of jobs. In fact, the industry is crying out for new blood. The sector, as a whole, needs 86,000 new professionals this year, according to the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB). The website www.bconstructive.co.uk gives details about the careers on offer.

Construction is the single biggest industry in the UK, employing 2.1 million people in 700 different types of jobs. And it's an industry we can be proud of, according to the CITB.

While there is an acute skills shortage, applicants in related degree programmes have risen in the past two years, after a 10-year national decline.

Careers in construction tend to be interesting and stimulating, according to recent graduate entrants polled by Graduate Prospects. And if you want to work abroad - whether in deserts or on oil platforms - then this is a career for you. A quick scrawl on one construction engineering recruitment website shows some high-profile jobs, the first in New Zealand, the next in sub-Saharan Africa.

Construction engineering requires people with technical know-how - you can't afford to make mistakes - as well as good commercial, communication and IT skills. Then there's the satisfaction of contributing to the aesthetics of a beautiful construction or the ability to build something sustainable without harming the environment.

Which means that the Olympics provides an exciting opportunity, especially in terms of constructing grandstands that can be re-used long after the athletes have left. "Engineers are dying to work on the Olympic project," says Sarah Bowden, a senior project manager with Arup. Her interest in engineering began as a seven-year-old, fascinated with the bridges she saw while travelling through France. "I wanted to know how they stood up," she says.

Women have traditionally made up a tiny proportion of engineers involved in construction, thanks in part to the industry's image of "blokes, bums and bricks". But this year the industry launched a campaign to attract female recruits - and one of the selling points was career opportunities in the forthcoming Olympic project.

Bowden says the split between civil and construction engineering in terms of training is a relatively recent phenomenon. Like many engineers, she says you still need a grasp of both design and construction. She loves the variety of her job, which has included stints at Canary Wharf Underground station and on the M6 toll project. "I played a small part in the M6 toll as a site engineer," she says, "but I feel an ownership in the project. I think: look, there it is. I built that."

Her focus now is on the use of information technology to improve efficiency and communication in the construction industry. The 29-year-old leads a research project on mobile IT, which means managing a consortium of 50 organisations. But the best part of the job is still being on site. "I get a buzz because there is so much going on everywhere you look," she says. "You see things not many people get to see, like the skeleton of a building as it goes up.

"You get to build something that lasts for years and serves the public."