Global engineering body to up partnership with Indian techies

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), a global engineering society which boasts of over 1.5 lakh members globally, is looking to strengthen its partnership with Indian engineering community in all branches of engineering.

The London-headquartered organisation said it was aiming to bring its global network and tools to help the Indian engineering and technology professionals to hone new skills and stay tuned to the latest technological advancement.

IET is also in talks with Indian companies like Infosys, Reliance, Wipro and TCS for establishing business partner relationships.

Presently, IET has 1,800 global business partners including Microsoft, Cisco and IBM. Robin W McGill, Chief Executive and Secretary, said IET was talking to all these companies and was expecting to choose 2-3 partners in India soon. IET at present does not have a business partner in India.

During his first visit to India, McGill said the major objective of the organisation would be to build better bonding with the Indian engineering community by fostering the habit of creating and sharing knowledge among them.

"The IET strongly believes that we can help the global engineering community in India to benefit more by involving the greatest of the minds in this country in its activities and in the advancement of science," he added.

Commenting on the dearth of engineering professionals in traditional sectors like manufacturing, heavy electronics and automobiles, McGill said one of the main objectives of IET was to promote all branches of engineering.

"It's true that higher wages in IT sector is driving engineers to join the profession in India. But this is a situation anywhere else. Even in UK over half of the engineering graduates prefer joining financial and banking sector."

IET members belong to a diverse range of technical background including IT, communications technology, electronics, electrical, manufacturing and power engineering. Of the 153,000 members, IET has 35,000 belonging to ICT background followed by 33,000 from electronics and 28,000 from energy and power.

McGill said IET was planning to hold a series of international seminars in India on wireless, mobile and multimedia networks. The first among those will be held in Mumbai in between January 11-12 next year.