The highway transportation industry's growing concern about the adequacy of its present and future supplies of technical manpower resulted in the formation of a cgra subcommittee at last year's convention to assess the situation on a systematic and factual basis. This paper is essentially a summary of the subcommittee's work and has relied heavily on the experiences of a wide cross section of the industry as well as on available data. The variety of problems encountered are combined into a national context and an attempt is made to clarify some of the issues involved. It was found that there is a storage of engineers and technicians, that future prospects for improvement are not very optimistic and that these shortages extend to civil engineering and to engineering in general. A number of deficiencies exist in the present situation and certain facts are provided. These relate to questions of utilization, the effect of the u.s. situation, recruitment, turnover rates, supply sources, changing functions, various quantity and quality aspects, the role of consultants and the future skills and roles of engineers and technicians. A number of recommendations are also set forth to aid the industry in developing sound manpower policies. These relate to better utilization, policies for balanced supplies of engineers and technicians, technical institutes as another supply source, 'image' deficiencies, research support, long range policies for attracting more and better people, greater university recognition of transportation. Continuing education needs and the use of manpower 'data banks' for future planning.
Samenvatting