Corporate value systems have changed with the evolution of bottom line items that go beyond profit. Awareness of the environment, ecology and health systems have emerged strongly where the impacts of these are able to be managed with technology development.

In engineering education training and practice, it is not uncommon to witness those who question the effectiveness of present-day curricula which in real terms have not differed significantly from those of earlier generations. Obviously the tools that facilitate learning have changed with modern information technology developments such as computers, software and digital configuration. How often has one heard the comments questioning the inclusion of certain academic basics into programmes where the graduate has claimed that such learning has never been applied in their subsequent careers? In engineering curricula this may be a truism but the challenge is that due to the "connectedness” of science and technology, where does one omit such content?

The great thing about an engineering curriculum is that it addresses the challenge of tackling those aspects of life that do not radically change: the laws of nature and science remain intact, the fundamentals still exist, the approach to problem solving and the need to develop empirical competence are still the foundations of the Engineer’s world. They are the toolbox for future applications. What does matter thereafter is the training and practice of how to use them to build the environment we purport to do better than any other profession.

The matter of becoming competent to apply these principals, plus those of management and economics, then need to be assessed as to their relevance of past experiences on modern engineering practice. Have these changed other than for the tweaking required for inclusion of new technologies, materials development, and refinement of codes of practice for example? What age group is the right mentorship group? Are the retired or semi-retired the right dispensers of experiential skills and advice? Has this thinking now emerged for the reason that each generation of Engineers from the baby boomer era was both supervised and mentored by the next level in the system as a matter of course where is was not called "official mentoring” but de facto on the job development in the process of evolving the next skills layer?

There was clear period of world practice in infrastructure development with the emergence of industry, production and modern supply chain logistics. Large projects covering all the technologies were common: energy development, transport, communications and service industries emerged that had decades of continuity that encouraged sequential training and development of practical skills.

We must question why we now have an era where this has reduced significantly and it is evident that internationally well experienced skills in the lower, active age groups are in very short supply.

From a human development perspective, the period over which a candidate Engineer needs to develop sufficient competencies to be recognized as a professional will not have changed. Gladwell’s theory on the 10,000 hour rule probably applies where any person claiming expertise will have spent 10,000 hours odd developing that expertise. So the candidacy phase which is set as 3 years minimum is rarely met, and the statistics show that 5 years is the norm. If you work that out, it is about 10,000 hours.