BE Magazine Volume 5, Issue 2 - (Page 13) meet these challenges. Meeting these challenges also requires a robust global community of infrastructure professionals— engineers, designers, architects, managers, scientists, and business leaders. Unfortunately, today there is a well-documented global shortage of people possessing the requisite skills to design, build, and operate the global infrastructure required to meet the twin challenges of improved quality of life for everyone and maintaining a healthy planet. The availability of infrastructure professionals is a critical issue. Reports from governments and private industry on this topic abound. Insufficient numbers are entering the engineering fields. A Google search on “technical skill shortage” will return over a million hits, listing page after page of white papers, news reports, seminars, conferences, and government policies, all focused on assessing, mitigating, and overcoming the issue of an acute and growing shortage of technical skills. In its “2007 Talent Shortage Survey,” Manpower Inc.—a global Fortune 500 firm focused on corporate human resource issues—interviewed nearly 37,000 firms in 27 countries to assess the impact of labor shortages in their respective regions. Globally, 41 percent of the employers reported difficulty in filling available positions due to a shortage of skilled prospects. According to the 2008 report by McGrawHill Construction, “Key Trends in the European and U.S. Construction Market,” the construction workforce labor shortage “has escalated into near-crisis mode for firms around the world.” Even India faces a critical shortage of people in the construction industry. There are many factors affecting the available pool of specialized technical talent required to confront the issues we face related to the global infrastructure: aging populations, declining birthrates, societal changes, inadequate education programs, and inadequate recruiting of young people to the technical professions. Again, according to Manpower, “Talent shortages exist in many areas of the global labor force today, a situation that will grow more acute and more widespread across more jobs over the next 10 years—and could threaten the engines of world economic growth and prosperity.” Addressing this growing shortage of infrastructure professionals will require infrastructure. Within the infrastructure community, Bentley users work this problem one project at a time. There are a multitude of strategies for creating a sustainable world by sustaining society, sustaining the environment, and sustaining the infrastructure professions. Sustaining society by delivering basic infrastructure to people in the greatest need includes the creation of the infrastructure required to provide clean drinking water There is a well-documented global shortage of people possessing the requisite skills to design, build, and operate the global infrastructure. recruiting more young people worldwide to infrastructure professions. It will also require tools and technology to enable existing infrastructure professionals to be more productive as well as to collaborate on infrastructure projects regardless of where those projects exist. Responding to the sustainability imperatives for the world’s infrastructure requires a sufficient pool of well-educated, motivated, and globally connected infrastructure professionals. Meeting the sustainability challenge Creating a sustainable world through infrastructure requires addressing three interrelated and complex issues: sustaining society, sustaining the environment, and sustaining the infrastructure professions. Sustaining infrastructure is an organizing concept for these activities and can be read in a number of ways in terms of our global sustainability objectives. There are many approaches to meeting the challenges of sustainability through Creating a sustainable world through infrastructure requires addressing three interrelated and complex issues. and meet basic sanitation requirements in the developing world. This is not limited to rural areas. Given the significant migration to urban areas, particularly in the developing world, this also refers to providing the basic infrastructure services—housing, water, and sewer—to support growing lowincome populations in urban areas. Sustaining society by providing access to non-infrastructure services means creating access to (roads, bridges, and communication systems, for example) and the facilities (buildings, hospitals, and so on) for noninfrastructure services such as basic health and medical services, education, and food distribution. Sustaining society by developing soft infrastructure means that we support the awareness, education, and training for the local population in the availability, use, operation, and maintenance of the infrastructure and its related services. That is the goal of HOPE Worldwide, for instance. Beyond meeting basic needs, infrastructure provides the means for societies to thrive and grow, as enabled by approaches such as improving services provided by infrastructure assets, improving the availability of infrastructure services, and increasing the adaptability of infrastructure. Sustaining the environment The second sustainability challenge is to become good stewards of the planet, Volume 5, Issue 2 | BE MAGAZINE 13 http://construction.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0249-266922_ITM_analytics http://construction.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0249-266922_ITM_analytics http://www.indiaenews.com/business/20071114/80632.htm http://www.hopeww.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?&pid=191&srcid=-2
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