COVID 19 Pandemic: Challenges and Opportunities for Engineering Professionals (An online conference report)

Speaker: Assoc. Prof. Ts. Ir. Dr. Syuhaida Ismail

Date: 20th November 2020

The unanticipated spread of the novel virus COVID-19 has brought chaos into almost every single aspect humankind can be defined with. Historically, pandemics are no stranger to us humans considering previous spread of diseases such as H1N1, SARS and EBOLA. However, due to higher rate of spreading, and increasing use of global transportation via airlines for tourism or work purposes, COVID-19 has managed to leave its footprint to a wider geographical extension [1] as well as ride on international commutes to further boost the speed of its movement [1]. These consequences along with currently heavy interdependency between countries in terms of economy, social and even politics have lent COVID the power to paralyze and disable some of the most crucial sectors in the world. Engineering are not exempted from being affected. In a different affective way, engineering has its own share in everything we encounter in our daily lives as does COVID-19.

            We have seen tremendous changes implemented to how we interact, how we move about and how we communicate lately. The introduction of new rules to constraint the spread of COVID-19 such as mandatory use of facial masks that confirm to health regulations, scanning QR codes for tracking purposes, social distancing and so many other requirements have impacted the daily lives of the masses. These changes imposed by the need to control the spread of COVID-19 have forced paradigm shifts throughout different levels of society. So far, the largest COVID-19 cluster ever recorded is the Tabligh cluster which has caused a huge jump of cases from 99 to 200 on the 8th March of 2020. This cluster results in a total of 1701 cases. However, in every cloud has a silver lining. On 20^th of November 2020, Assoc. Prof. Ts. Ir. Dr. Syuhaida Ismail, the acting Secretary cum Treasurer from the Project Management Technical Division (PMTD) of Institution of Engineers Malaysia (IEM) addressed some of the gold mines engineers can venture into in spite of the madness we all are living in. The full title of her speech was “COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges and Opportunities for Engineering Professionals.” Proceeding contents are paraphrased words derived from the content presented in her speech.

Challenges

By definition, economy is the large set of inter-related production and consumption activities that aid in determining how scarce resources are allocated [2]. These activities require interpersonal interactions of which have changed drastically to accommodate health requirements. And when changes occur especially at such a huge scale, there will be friction caused by the process of transitioning to a new norm. This has caused huge losses to the main players of the global economy. It has been observed that the sectors which have been impacted the most are directly related to transportation. Big companies such as Airbus (aerospace), Renault (automotive), Santander (Banking), British Petroleum Company Limited (oil and gas), Shell (oil and gas), Chevron (oil and gas), American Airlines (airline), General Motors (automotive) and Volkswagen (automotive) all have severely been impacted by COVID-19. In the Malaysian economical context, we have also observed an alarming -1.7% economic growth, which is worse than during the Great Recession, where the Malaysian economic growth is rated at -1.51%.

            From the Department of Statistics Malaysia, industries are observed to experience a decline in growth rate by comparing the fourth financial quarter of 2019 and first financial quarter of 2020 [3]. The services industry which holds the most share in contribution of gross domestic products (GDP) at 58.4% experience a decline of growth from 6.2% to 3.1%. The industry of services umbrellas information and communication, wholesale and trade, and finance and insurance. Next biggest industry is manufacturing, holding 22.3% share in GDP contribution and includes activities such as producing petroleum, chemical, rubber and plastic products as well as electrical, electronic and optical products. Manufacturing has been observed to slow down in terms of growth from 3.0% to 1.5%.  Mining and quarrying (7.3% share) which performs crude oil and condensation operations is the only sector that experience in growth from -3.4% to -2.0%. The last two sectors are construction (4.5% share) and agriculture (6.5% share), both experience a decline in growth from 1.0% to -7.9% and -5.7% to -8.7% respectively. Overall, it can be said certainly that from observation as well as analysis results, COVID-19 has greatly impacted the engineering related sectors in Malaysia.

             As mentioned in the first paragraph, a transition process operating at such a huge scale will experience friction. Dr. Syuhaida quoted that 83% companies experience difficulties with communicating with their customers and suppliers using online platforms, while 70% of them experience disruption during communication processes. A lot of projects have been postponed or cancelled. Some projects are even forced to be stopped by legal bodies due to their failure to comply with standard operating procedures (SOPs). The fact that the majority of Malaysia’s construction industry heavily relies on foreign workers (forms 93% of construction workers) certainly does not help. Foreign workers in this sector are mostly from low income countries and are regarded as highly vulnerable to COVID-19 as they are more likely to violate SOPs. Factors that lead to this are mostly circumstantial such as the difficulty to communicate and educate them on SOPs due to language barrier and the tightly spaced enclosure provided by the labour accommodation that they live in such as “kongsi” and centralized labour quarters (CLQ). Some foreign workers also apparently have escaped from COVID-19 screening due to the anxiety of being caught by authorities for unrelated legal violations such as having no work permits. These events have resulted in a portion of 40% of total cases in 16^th of November by the construction worker cluster.

Opportunities

The numbers are frightening, surely. Coupled with other undiscussed but “everyone is aware of” issues that are not included in the previous section such as rate of unemployment, confidence at workplace with COVID-19, etc, it truly sometimes feels like the end of the world. However, this is not particularly the case for engineers. Throughout her speech, Dr. Syuhaida constantly stresses on how engineers are meant to be problem solvers. So, while COVID-19 has unfortunately given rise to unprecedented problems, engineers should be proactive in response and come up with unprecedented solutions as well. It is important to not miss out on opportunities provided by the increase of demand for new products or services that are needed to accommodate for the necessary changes imposed by health regulations.

            The most apparent example of new demand would be the increasing need for new technologies such as contact tracer applications such as MySejahtera and temperature takers. These technologies are crucial cogs in the COVID-19 prevention mechanism. Along with increasing awareness of the danger posed by the current pandemic, the need for improvements in these technologies in terms of mass production, accuracy and reliability will also increase. These areas are the vacancies that engineers need to fill in. An interesting example provided by Dr. Syuhaida was the introduction of a reusable face mask by New Balance, a company that is usually concerned with sportswear. This, she said is an indicator of how businesses are forced to adapt to the change in market demand. New Balance has acknowledged that most countries are now enforcing stricter rules that will affect their sportswear revenue and thus introduced a new line of product. These reusable face masks are mass produced and thus will create a need for engineers to work in the manufacturing sector.

            Apart from that, engineers can also collaborate with professionals from the medical sectors to help set up testing facilities. Currently, Malaysia adopts the South Korean model to perform early detection screenings for COVID-19. 48 laboratories have been used to undertake 11,500 samples per day. These facilities are actually capable of operating at a maximum number of 16,500 tests per day. Considering the fact that setting up a testing facility is a multifaceted need, the numbers quoted can be translated into a high level of demand for professionals including engineers.  The production and development of plexiglass is another area where engineers can choose to participate in. Ever since COVID-19, various facilities including restaurants have adopted the use of plexiglass as shields to minimise the spread of COVID-19 via air distribution. Apart from plexiglass, engineers do not need to look far for prospective jobs. Consider the current need to use the commonly seen face mask. These masks are mass produced in factories and thus involve supply chains. These open up rooms for innovations such as introduction of a new technique to mass produce the masks that use less cost. Other medical/health-oriented products that require engineers’ involvements are medical goggles. Several institutions have started to play around with 3D-printing and the production of medical goggles. This production alternative will require engineering knowledge in order for it to be translated into actual production lines.

            The implementation of work from home policies in most organizations have driven the increase of usage in virtual platforms to perform professional communications. Quoting statistics collected by Hootsuit, Dr. Syuhaida provided some interesting numbers on the use of popular virtual platforms on the global scale. The most used webinar application is Zoom which has a total of 300 million users per day, followed by Google Meet (100 million users per day), Microsoft Teams (75 million users per day), Skype (40 million users per day and Cisco Webex (500 million users per month). Reaching millions, these numbers provided us insights on the current demand for streaming related services and devices. From the configuration of systems to the production of streaming devices, these are all within the bounds of engineering. Interestingly enough, despite the obvious increase in internet use, Malaysia still remains perform relatively poor in terms of internet connectivity compared to neighbouring countries. This calls for improvement, and whenever there is a need for systemic improvement, there will be a need for engineers.

Conclusion

“Engineers are a special bunch of people” said Dr. Syuhaida. As closing remarks, she shared funny stories and made us participate in an interesting observation-based experiment. These are included to teach us two lessons; the need to be creative in tackling issues and the importance of looking beyond what is seen immediately. There are still lots of available opportunities for engineers to thrive amidst this horrendous pandemic. Health, safety and environment (HSE) applications, ventilation hoods as well collaboration with non-engineering professionals to come up with non-engineering solutions are well within any engineer’s reach to grasp. After all, again, every cloud has its own silver lining.

References 

[1] M. CW, "Pandemics: A Very Short Introduction," in Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2016.


[2] W. Kenton, "Investopedia," 2 11 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economy.asp#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways-,An%20economy%20is%20the%20large%20set%20of%20inter%2Drelated%20production,living%20and%20operating%20within%20it.. [Accessed 22 11 2020].


[3] D. S. D. M. U. Mahidin, "Department of Statistics Malaysia," 13 5 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.dosm.gov.my/v1/index.php?r=column/cthemeByCat&cat=100&bul_id=R09wdGZSektvNmw5T1VCeVphNXRqdz09&menu_id=TE5CRUZCblh4ZTZMODZIbmk2aWRRQT09. [Accessed 22 11 2020].