The Future of the Footbridge Engineer in the Purpose Economy

The time period we live in generates a context in which the bridge engineer does its job. He designs safe, reliable, economical and durable structures for people and goods to cross roads, rivers and valleys. The context in which we do our job matters, for example in the industrial Age the bridge engineer was at the forefront due to big innovations in materials and technologies to design and build bigger and longer bridges. Which helped build the transportation networks that were essential for quick national and international trade and economic growth. In the following Information Age due to new digital technological innovations it was made much easier to process large amounts of data than before. This resulted in a huge optimisation in material qualities, construction methods, analysing methods of forces and forms and cost. But automation, standardisation and the new technologies also changed the role of the engineer from leader to enabler.

Today we are seeing a slow shift of the Information economy towards a Purpose economy. The Purpose economy is one in which employees and customers are driven by their sense of social purpose, more so than by personal financial and status gain. Public clients align themselves with global and national goals, like the UN Sustainability Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement, to set the future context for bridge designers to find the best fitting solutions. As bridge engineers in the emerging Purpose economy we have an opportunity to lead again in finding the best fitted solutions, in addition to proving the solutions, for the betterment of society.

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