The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) has released details of this year’s National Engineering Day, its annual celebration of the engineers and innovations that are shaping our lives.
This year, National Engineering Day will be held on 5 November.
This year’s theme is ‘re-engineering what it means to be an engineer’, helping the public think beyond hard hats and hi-vis to see engineering as the creative, human-centred and future-shaping force it truly is. The aim is to make the UK’s engineers and engineering more visible and celebrating how they improve everyday lives and shape the world around us.
With this aim in mind, in the lead up, the RAE is inviting engineers to tell it about their current role, in order to create an AI–Z guide of engineering roles by 31 August.
The AI–Z of Engineering is a crowdsourced online guide that will feature more than 100 current and 100 future-envisaged engineering roles, explaining what these jobs entail in clear, simple language that anyone can understand in order to show what engineers do today and will do in the future. Designed to spark interest in engineering careers and challenge outdated stereotypes, the guide will be accompanied by a futurologist’s vision of a world shaped by engineers, intended to help fire the public’s imagination about what the future could look like.
The RAE is calling on engineers to spread the word and encourage their teams, networks and stakeholders to contribute to the AI–Z guide and share the campaign widely. ‘By getting involved, your organisation can help inspire the next generation of engineers and show the world just how exciting and essential engineering is – today and tomorrow,’ the RAE said.
The guide will be launched on the This is Engineering website on National Engineering Day and will remain a living, evolving resource.
A collection of resources about National Engineering Day can be found here.


