National Committee on Water EngineeringPlease note that this paper is held here for archival purposes, the most up to date papers are currently held on the Engineers Australia website.
Water engineering is the field of engineering that is concerned with the utilisation, control, treatment, protection and management of water for the sustainable benefit of humankind and the environment. It includes the following activities: water supply, sewerage, drainage, irrigation, flood control, erosion control, water and wastewater treatment, water pollution control, hydro-electric generation and water resources management.
It is practised primarily by civil or environmental engineers, but usually involves inputs from other sub-disciplines of engineering and other professions, including: chemical, mechanical, electrical and agricultural engineers, chemists, biologists, geologists, economists, lawyers and social scientists. In Australia the investment in water engineering infrastructure is massive. For example, the investment in water supply, sewerage and irrigation is about $55 billion.
The education of water engineers should be viewed as a process which initiates undergraduates into water engineering and then maintains and nurtures their skills and professionalism throughout the remainder of their career. To realise this process several broad objectives need to be met, most of which are common to all disciplines of engineering:
These objectives are onerous, both on the individual being initiated into water engineering and on the institutions providing the education. No single institution can meet all these objectives. Indeed, water engineering education is provided through a partnership between various institutions. This partnership is not a static process, but is constantly evolving, sometimes responding to external forces and sometimes looking forward in anticipation of change.
In Australia the education of water engineers has primarily been through formal bachelor degrees in civil engineering accredited by the Institution of Engineers, Australia (hereafter referred to as the Institution). More recently, a number of universities are offering bachelor degrees in environmental engineering. A proportion of graduates from these programs practise in the area of water engineering.
Currently there are 23 universities in Australia which offer bachelor degrees in civil engineering and 12 which offer bachelor degrees in environmental engineering In addition the University of New England is unique in offering a bachelor degree in natural resource engineering which has a strong emphasis on the management of water and soil resources.
All of these undergraduate degrees require four years of full-time study or an equivalent amount of part-time study. One or two institutions offer a bachelor degree in civil or environmental engineering by off-campus study (eg. civil engineering at the University of Southern Queensland and environmental engineering at Deakin University).
All civil engineering students in Australia study some hydraulics and/or fluid mechanics as well as hydrology. Most study aspects of public health and environmental engineering. Some courses also contain studies in water resources management and planning. Virtually all environmental engineering courses contain studies in environmental fluid mechanics, hydraulics and hydrology. They also contain significant studies in water quality, water and wastewater treatment, groundwater contamination and natural resources management.
The Institution views undergraduate engineering education as the first step towards attaining the status of a professional engineer. The graduate engineer must serve something akin to an apprenticeship and face further assessment before being eligible to be admitted as a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng) of the Institution and a member of the College of Civil Engineers.
The engineering profession under the auspices of the Institution provides another link in the education partnership. Engineering graduates must typically obtain at least three years of approved engineering experience working under the supervision of an experienced engineer. At least one year of this experience must be in design or planning and at least one year in construction or manufacturing.
Chartered members can apply for registration as a professional engineer. The National Professional Engineers Register Section 3 (NPER-3) is restricted to current practicing engineers who have maintained an average of at least 50 weighted hours of continuing professional development activities over a rolling period of three years. Professional development activities include formal postgraduate training, attending conferences or short courses as well as self-directed reading.
At the postgraduate level, a number of universities now offer specialist studies in water-related areas. Formal postgraduate coursework qualifications recognised by the Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education and Training include the graduate certificate (1 semester of full-time study), graduate diploma (2 semesters of full-time study) and masters degree (1 to 2 years of full-time study). Examples of postgraduate coursework programs in the area of water engineering are listed in the Appendix.
Postgraduate masters degrees by coursework often involve a research component. This may be as high as 50% of the total work for the degree. The topic studied in a research degree is an individual matter which is decided jointly by the student and the supervisor.
All departments (or schools) of civil (or civil and environmental) engineering offer postgraduate research degrees in water or environmental engineering. These include the master of engineering (or engineering science) and the doctor of philosophy (PhD). A masters degree by research requires 1 to 2 years of full-time study while a PhD requires 2 to 4 years. Engineering graduates are often accepted as Masters and PhD students in science faculties of Australian universities.
The Commonwealth Government's cooperative research centre (CRC) program has funded three centres which have ties with water engineering. These are the Centre for Catchment Hydrology (involving the CSIRO Division of Water Resources, Monash University and the University of Melbourne), the Centre for Waste Management and Pollution Control (involving the University of New South Wales and several others) and the Centre for Water Treatment and Water Quality (involving SA Water, the University of South Australia, the University of Adelaide, RMIT, Monash University and CSIRO). In addition, a number of other research centres exist including the Australian Centre for Water Research (University of Western Australia) and two Centres for Groundwater Research based at the University of Technology, Sydney and at the CSIRO Division of Water Resources in Adelaide and Perth.
The CRCs are aimed at promoting cooperative research with industry and have a number of industrial partners. They also promote postgraduate research and training.
Universities and other professional bodies offer a wide range of seminars and short courses for practicing water engineers to maintain and enhance their professional knowledge. These courses may vary in length from a one-hour seminar to a short course run over one to two weeks.
Short courses and seminars in water engineering are organised by the State Water Panels of the Institution, the Hydrological Societies of South Australia and Canberra, the Australian Water and Wastewater Association (AWWA), the Australian National Committee on Large Dams (ANCOLD), the Australian Chapter of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) and the Stormwater Industry Association. The topics covered embrace the full range of water engineering and are usually strongly focussed on a particular area. For example: municipal water treatment, time series modelling in hydrology, design of wetlands, groundwater modelling, water reuse, and urban drainage design.
Individual subjects from an undergraduate degree or postgraduate qualification are also available at most universities.
A wide range of conferences in water engineering are offered in Australia. The National Committee on Water Engineering of the Institution organises the following conferences: the Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium series (18-month cycle), the Hydraulics in Civil Engineering series (triennially), the Stormwater Management series (triennially) and the Watercomp series (at irregular intervals).
The AWWA has an annual convention as does the IAH. Other conferences are organised on an irregular basis by ANCOLD and other bodies.
Some universities (eg. Deakin University and the University of New England) have specialised in providing education in an off-campus mode. Bachelor degrees in civil or environmental engineering as well as post graduate qualifications may be taken in this way.
The last fifteen years have seen political, technological, economical and institutional changes which have affected (or will affect) the practice and teaching of water engineering. Some of these changes are reviewed in the context of how they affect the demand for and delivery of water engineering education.
Developments in information technology have had a dramatic impact on the practice of water engineering. The ready availability of user-friendly software with graphical interfaces and the rapidly increasing processing power of computers has enabled the simulation of extremely complicated systems. Simulation packages for surface hydrology, groundwater systems, water quality and pipe networks are widely used in practice.
The use of these packages has brought associated dangers of misuse by people who do not fully understand the limitations of the particular model or its application to the real system under consideration. Now, more than ever, the water engineer needs to have a good fundamental understanding of the processes being modelled. Any use of a computer model requires a close examination of the assumptions implicit in the model and its domain of applicability. Limitations in the availability of data and its accuracy also need to be borne in mind.
New developments in computer technology include the availability of non-procedural languages and artificial intelligence techniques. The latter include knowledge-based expert systems, artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms. These techniques work by analogy with the human brain or natural genetics and offer considerable potential in areas such as system operation, pattern recognition, forecasting and optimisation. The availability of geographic information systems for desktop computers has provided access to comprehensive databases of catchment or infrastructure characteristics. This, in turn, may facilitate more accurate modelling of environmental systems or highlight areas of data deficiencies.
The use of the term "decision support systems" highlights the appropriate role of computer models and data bases as aids in making decisions. The focus of the water engineer should be on the evaluation of options (both structural and non-structural) and the consideration of system performance criteria such as economic benefits and costs, environmental and sustainability issues and social impacts. In many cases the water engineer can now identify the best solution rather than concentrate on a single technical option.
Paradoxically the computer has freed the water engineer from the tyranny of involved calculations only to lure him into a world of models of ever-increasing complexity. Indeed it is now accepted that computer models have far outstripped the ability of water engineers and scientists to test and verify them. Today's water engineer needs more sophisticated skills than his counterpart of fifteen to twenty years ago,
The water industry develops, utilises, maintains and refurbishes infrastructure assets. In the last fifteen years, this industry has undergone significant change, much of which has been forced by socio-political changes.
A significant fraction of water engineering was practised within public sector agencies which are responsible for much of the water-based infrastructure. The drive for greater efficiency in the public sector and the consequent trend toward privatisation has seen a deskilling of public sector agencies and a move to dilute the role of engineers in senior management. In essence there has been a transfer of water engineering expertise from the public to the private sector.
The public sector has traditionally provided training for graduate engineers. With the opportunity for training within the public sector diminishing, the private sector will have to accept a greater role in training. As the pool of experienced engineers diminishes market forces will drive the private sector to increase its role in training graduates and/or recruiting experienced engineers from overseas,
Accompanying these changes have been shifts in policy and objectives. Narrow institutional perspectives have given way to broader social/environmental perspectives. The culture of developing new infrastructure has given way to a culture emphasising management and optimisation of existing resources and infrastructure.
The growing recognition that environmental values are important considerations in decision making as well as the ethos of sustainable use of natural resources has significantly altered public policy and, in turn, the design objectives faced by water engineers. A prime example has been the shift from a near-exclusive focus on water quantity to a more balanced assessment of quantity and quality issues.
These changes have affected the work of all water engineers. The shifts in public, political and managerial perspectives have caused, at times, sharp changes of policy direction, and have required the mastering of new skills. These forces feedback into the education sector in a myriad of ways, the most conspicuous being the emergence of 12 undergraduate programs in environmental engineering in less than a decade.
As the tertiary education sector has adjusted to change by introducing new bachelor degrees in environmental engineering there have been two major structural reforms imposed by the Commonwealth Government: The demise of the binary system and a gradual reduction in recurrent funds.
The Dawkins reforms of the tertiary sector (ca. 1989) saw the end of the binary system which consisted of universities and institutes of technology or colleges of advanced education. The latter were either amalgamated with existing universities or given university status in their own right. Although not a bad thing per se, when coupled with a gradually reduced level of funding to the tertiary sector, this change has had a major impact on tertiary education in general, and engineering education in particular.
Reduced funding to the tertiary sector has been coupled with increasing numbers of undergraduate students. The last major review of engineering education in Australia was carried out by the Williams Committee in 1988. The committee considered that the student staff ratio in engineering departments of 10:1 is reasonable. Most civil engineering departments in Australia now have a student staff ratio in excess of 15:1. This has inevitably degraded the quality of civil engineering education as well as reduced the research output and lowered staff morale in these departments.
Over the last few years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of postgraduate coursework qualifications offered in water engineering. This has occurred in response to a perceived demand by the profession and as a means of increasing external funding. Unfortunately, many of these programs are operating with small numbers of students and are barely viable. There is a need for a rationalisation of the courses offered. The possibility of sharing courses between universities using teleteaching facilities should be considered.
Education has considerable potential as an export earner for the Australian economy. Many universities are now actively promoting their undergraduate and postgraduate programs in the Asia-Pacific region. Some universities have entered into twinning arrangements with off-shore organisations to allow students to study the first one or two years of their degree in their home country before completing their degree in Australia. Overseas fee-paying students represent a major source of funding to some civil engineering programs in Australia. However, the uncertainty of this funding source usually prevents the appointment of tenured staff to carry the additional teaching load.
Another major challenge affecting education in water engineering arises from new developments in information technology including the Internet, teleteaching facilities, the telecasting of engineering courses, cable television and CD ROM technology. These developments may revolutionise all forms of education (both on- and off-campus) in the next decade. Indeed the ready availability of books, journals and software through the Internet and reducing costs of microcomputers raises the issue as to whether all students will become "off-campus" students in a very short space of time. This may be one of the greatest challenges facing engineering educators over the next few years.
A significant fraction of the research performed in water engineering has been performed in the tertiary sector. Apart from adding to the body of knowledge, research trains many of the future educators in water engineering. In recent years the tertiary research environment has changed.
The demise of the binary system has forced staff from the "new" universities into research. Since there has not been a significant increase in research funds provided by the Commonwealth Government, the result has been a much larger group of people competing for the same funds. The average success rate for Australian Research Council grants is now around 18%.
The Government has funded a number of welcome initiatives such as the Cooperative Research Centres (mentioned earlier) and Advanced Engineering Centres. Unfortunately these have been resourced by reducing the base level of research funding which used to be provided to all university departments. The consequence is that those civil engineering departments which are not associated with a centre (ie. the vast majority) have little or no money to purchase equipment which can be used for teaching or research. The students in these departments must use antiquated rather than state-of-the-art equipment and their education suffers accordingly.
Few Australian students are pursuing postgraduate research because of the low dollar value of scholarships (currently around half of the starting salary for an engineering graduate). Thus the pool to fill academic positions in water engineering is shrinking. Coupled with the reduced funding for engineering departments and the subsequent lower staff morale, there is considerable difficulty in attracting quality staff in the area of water engineering.
The Institution has concluded a far-reaching review of engineering education, which unlike earlier reviews, sets out a vision of where engineering education, particularly in the tertiary sector, should be headed. The commitment to the education objectives espoused in Section 2 is, if anything, strengthened with greater emphasis on holistic or systems thinking and professionalism. The review signals a more proactive role for the Institution as custodian of engineering education and as a stakeholder in its future.
Education is vital to the maintenance and growth of expertise in water engineering which is responsible for infrastructure valued well over $50 billion. However, it must be recognised that education is a process extending over much of the water engineer's career. No single institution can maintain this process alone. Rather engineering education is a partnership between formal educational providers, the profession and the Institution.
The present climate of change is arguably unprecedented in the rate at which the change is occurring. Changes in technology, the de-skilling of the public sector, socio-political shifts and structural change in the tertiary education sector are certainly stressing and challenging the education partnership forcing it to evolve and adapt.
Unfortunately these changes will not necessarily lead to better water engineering education and practice. The Institution has a custodial responsibility to oversee this evolutionary process to ensure that the standards of water engineering education and practice are maintained if not improved. Even though the Institution has little control over the resources underpinning the education partnership it must play the role of a proactive custodian helping to shape the future of engineering education in a way relevant to the needs of our changing society. Moreover, a long-term vision is required which recognises that the education partnership is an integral part of Australia's engineering skills base which underpins our standing as an advanced Western nation. The challenge remains to develop such a vision and the associated commitment within the Australian community.
For further information, please contact:
National Committee on Water Engineering
The Institution of Engineers, Australia Telephone: (02) 6270 6555
11 National Circuit Facsimile: (02) 6273 1488
BARTON ACT 26000. WWW: ieaust.org.au
Prepared on behalf of the National Committee on Water Engineering
by George Kuczera and Graeme Dandy 1995.
Institution |
Programs |
|---|---|
University of New South Wales |
Grad Cert. in Hydrology: Grad. Dip./MEngSc (water engineering or public health engineering) |
University of Wollongong |
Grad. Dip/MEng (water engineering or environmental engineering) |
University of Melbourne |
Grad Cert./Grad. Dip./MEngSc (water engineering or environmental engineering) |
Monash University |
G.ad. Dip./MEngSc (water engineering or environmental engineering) |
Deakin University |
Grad, Dip. (water engineering and management or environmental engineering) |
University of Queensland |
Grad Cert/Grad.Dip. (environmental management); MEngSc (hydrology, public health engineering) |
Griffith University |
Grad. Cert./Grad. Dip./MEngSc (water care): Grad. Dip./MEngSc (environmental engineering) |
University of Adelaide, University of South Australia and Flinders University (joint program) |
Grad Cert./Grad. Dip./MFngSc/MEng/MSc (hydrology and water resource?) |
University of Adelaide |
Grad Cert./Grad. Dip, (environmental engineering) |
Last Modified:
Thursday, October 7, 2010 20:45
Comments to: peter.brady@eng.uts.edu.au