Resilience engineering will support communities – and inspire the next generation

We need resilience to thrive in the increasingly volatile and uncertain world be find ourselves in. Resilient societies – able to absorb shocks and adapt in a changing environment – can better realise their strategic ambitions, protect critical resources, and capitalise on investment. They can create and sustain opportunities for enterprise, and empower individuals, communities and institutions to adapt and prosper.

In short, societal resilience encompasses our transport systems, energy supply, food supply, and critical manufacturing components. It also includes the resilience of our workforce and the future skills it needs, as well as the cohesion of our communities in our increasingly polarised society. Stresses on these systems undermine their ability to weather adversity, change and challenge. And when adversity strikes, it is unequal in its effect. Those most vulnerable suffer disproportionately to the rest of us. Think of the Covid-19 pandemic, where we collectively took measures, such as getting vaccinated and wearing masks, to protect the most vulnerable in society.

Engineering is at the heart of many of these systems and should be seen as an enabler for more resilient societies. Greater visibility of this underlying purpose could attract a new cadre of young people into engineering – which is sorely needed.

2023 projections from strategy firm Stonehaven indicate that the UK could face a shortfall of a million engineers by 2030, threatening critical infrastructure projects such as building new hospitals. The same research also indicates that young people seek careers in which they can contribute to improving society: 40% of Gen Z and millennials prioritise job opportunities that allow them to make a positive impact in their local communities. Articulating engineering in terms of its purpose and societal impact is key to enticing more interest and providing rewarding careers.

By making engineering a conduit for positive impact in communities, we can inspire the next wave of innovators. Engineering should no longer be viewed merely as a technical discipline: it is a chance to build a sustainable future, where resilience and community engagement are at the forefront.

Shifting the perspective of engineering

To enable this shift in perception, engineers must first change the way we think and design. This requires not only adapting existing approaches and design standards but also cultivating a new generation of leaders who are committed to resilience principles and societal outcomes.

For example, a new suite of resilience standards, led by the International Standards Organisation (ISO), provides a framework for engineers to help create environments that can anticipate and respond to challenges. The first of these, ISO 22371, focuses on urban resilience. Taken together, the suite will help ensure that our systems remain functional, equitable, and sustainable in the face of adversity.

To incorporate resilience into our engineering, we need to embed some key principles into our design thinking:

1. Outcomes not outputs: understand the broader system value that is being delivered through engineering, for example, social, environmental and financial, and consider resilience as a strategic enabler of this value. Resilience should maintain performance outcomes of the asset.
2. Systems not silos: you may only be responsible for engineering one part of a broader system. Make sure you understand the end-to-end system, interdependencies and how risk and vulnerabilities cascade across the system. Prioritise collaboration and communication with the client and design team to understand this.
3. Proactive vs reactive: advocate for a proactive and targeted approach to resilience.
4. Resilience value: strategically designed resilient systems are not more expensive over whole-system life. Target interventions where they’re most needed. Consider the full suite of resilience interventions from anticipation, prevention and mitigation to adaptation, response and recovery and advocate the most relevant to achieve the client’s objectives. Quantify the benefits of investing in enhanced resilience through considering value at risk and immediate co-benefits.
5. Skillsets and mindsets: empower others to own resilience and do their part. Develop resilient mindsets by encouraging systems thinking, complex problem-solving and self-leadership to navigate adversity, change and challenge.

Establishing the resilient engineering professional

Resilience engineering is an emerging discipline that was developed initially as a new approach to safety. While traditional approaches to safety focus on what goes wrong when systems fail, resilience engineering investigates what goes right when systems are faced with surprises.

Resilience engineering acknowledges that humans design and manage critical systems, and considers the dynamic and complex ways that we interact with technology. It aims to make rigid systems more flexible by engaging people’s adaptive capacity to solve new problems and to make over-extended systems more robust by providing rigour, process and risk mitigations. In practice, resilience engineering enables us to more effectively anticipate, adapt, and learn from unexpected changes which impact operations and performance.

Resilience engineering theory, concepts, and methods are being applied in many contexts, including emergency preparedness and disaster response, critical infrastructure (including energy, water, transportation, communications, and cybersecurity), health science, organisational development, urban systems, supply chain management, space exploration, military operations, and climate change, so we should apply this thinking in all aspects of engineering.

Resilience professionals are typically responsible for the operational aspects of resilience within cities, regions or organisations and their work tends to focus on response and recovery planning and business continuity. Existing approaches to training for resilience experts are unstructured, with no clear progression pathway or professionalisation for resilience professionals.

A new and integrated approach to learning and development is needed to advance resilience in critical infrastructure because of the increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity of the world we now live in. As we navigate this shift, it is important to incorporate key competencies and skills that will define the “resilience engineer” into education. These include technical abilities coupled with meta-skills such as systems thinking, adaptability, and emotional intelligence. Resilient leadership, embracing collaboration, innovation, and proactive problem-solving, will be essential for guiding teams and projects toward successful outcomes in an unpredictable world.

To realise this vision, we must examine our education system and its approach to engineering. The current curriculum often emphasises mathematics and science but neglects the socio-technical aspects of engineering and the societal outcomes that engineering enables. By integrating resilience concepts and systems thinking into education, we can broaden engineering’s appeal to young people, illustrating that they too can contribute purposefully to resilience in their communities.

We are at a pivotal moment, where the future of engineering lies in our collective hands. By championing resilience, we can inspire a new generation of engineers who are not only technically proficient but also deeply connected to the communities they serve. Together, we can build a robust engineering profession capable of overcoming tomorrow's challenges.