Skip to main content

Market Scenario for Consulting Engineers in Malaysia PART 1

After the establishment of the Registration of Engineers Act in 1967, the number of consulting engineering firms increased and reaches nearly 2,000 at present. Until September 2014, there were about 16,537 professional engineers and 77,223 graduate engineers.  The rapid economic boom has opened up many opportunities for local professional engineers to set up their own consulting firms.

Even so, most of the consulting engineering firms focused on the domestic market than global. The previous 1980s and 1990s recession has caused many firms to downsize their operation and their professional staff. Engineer’s salary also did not budge and stagnant until now. An average salary of fresh engineers (private) paid at RM2,000.00 while the government sector paid at RM3000.00 (including allowances). Wage increases in levels of government can be seen after the recent salary review. Meanwhile, the salaries of private engineers are still in the status quo.

In September 2014, the Minister of Works of Malaysia informed that the Registration of Engineers Act 1967 will be amended in Parliament that allows the local engineers to practice engineering services abroad. However, it also opens up opportunities for foreign engineers to sign up with Board of Engineers (BEM) and offer engineering services in Malaysia.

Here are the details of the research paper by Dr. Gue See Sew, entitled: Grooming of Malaysian Sustainable Engineering Consultancy Firms For Export of Services.

Some of the key facts to ponder with:
  
  1. Top five (5) Consulting Firm in Malaysia (Sepakat Setia Perunding, MinConsult, Ranhil, Bersekutu, HSS Integrated and SHMB) remain stagnant for the last 25 years.
  2. Fierce competition in professional fees results in low salary for engineers and lead to brain drain phenomena.
  3. The largest consulting firm (Sepakat Setia Perunding) has about 503 staffs (2010, ACEM)
  4. Due to major concentration to local market, the economic downturns may result to massive downsizing and retrenchment such as those in the late 1980s and 1990s. 

Key challenges for local Consultancy Firms:
  1. Most of the local Consultant targeting for local market with less ambition / capacity to export their services overseas.
  2. The clients tend to look up at the foreign consultant with most of the local consultant become only as sub-consultant to foreign consultants for mega and complex project.
  3. Contracts awarded (sometimes) without full consideration of the consultant’s capability and capacity especially involving the Government project.
  4. And yes, fierce competition. *(Only federal projects enjoy the Scale of Fees set by BEM)
  5. Limited capital investment due to current Act that prevents non-professionals from owning share in a consultancy firm.
  6. Problems to retain the key senior engineers.
  7. Unable to grow in size with sufficient capacity and capability to compete in the international markets.
  8. Some may have an impressive CV in their company but do not have the key senior engineers in the specialized field. This may affect the project quality and performance.
  9. Difficulties in retaining knowledge and experience due to lack of long term planning frameworks.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Use of Cascading Drain to Collect Runoff From Slope

  Courtesy of THB Maintenance Sdn Bhd In tropical regions with rainfall stands as the crucial factors to starting the landslide mechanism, a proper surface drainage is important to avert any unwanted incidents. I only focusing on the surface runoff and the role of cascading drain to channel the runoff safely to designated discharged point. A rainfall on a steep slopes will run as surface runoff with lower probability for the water to infiltrate into the soil. This necessitate the introduction of cascading drain to collect the water from the berm or slope drain. The design of cascading drain is basically allowing the hydraulic jump, an abrupt changes from supercritical to subcritical flow that will reduce the water flow rate and act as an energy dissipater. The effectiveness of hydraulic jump depends on the input of the rainfall volumes and flow rate in which failure to do so will resulted to  flood and nuisance to the public.  ...
Post a Comment
Read more

PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER (PE) VS PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER WITH PRACTISING CERTIFICATE (PEPC)

Back then in 2015, there were some, well sort of uproars in regard to restriction of “Engr.” abbreviation before the graduate engineers’ name. The privilege of “Engr.” originated under the Institution of Engineers Malaysia (IEM) and definitely became as the beacon for engineering graduates to submit their membership registration. The restriction was due to the Board of Engineers Malaysia ( BEM) argument that such abbreviation will be misconstrued by the publics as “Professional Engineer”. Professional Engineer is the highest testament for any engineers in Malaysia in pursuing their career or establishing their own consultancy practice. Since its inception, the primary goal of having the Professional Engineer “licensure” is to provide engineering services in full-scale and in accordance to Engineer’s Act 1967. In 2015, the Engineer’s Act 1967 was amended to enhance the quality of engineers and in quest for the liberalisation of engineering services. The action has resulted t...
3 comments
Read more

PAHANG-SELANGOR RAW WATER TRANSFER PROJECT

The inter-state water transfer scheme was conceptualised in 1990s, with the completion target will be 2014. The scheme aims to convey raw water at 1,890 millions litre per day from Sungai Semantan in Pahang to the Hulu Langat water treatment facility in Selangor. The raw water will be transferred via a 44.56 km long, 5.2m diameter tunnel, with gravity flow to the water treatment plan.  The project progress currently at 60% completion and 3% ahead the schedule. Technically, the project make use of surface runoff from Sg. Bentong, Sg. Telemong and Sg. Kelau with a reservoir in Sg. Kelau.  The abstaction point is at the intake at. Sg. Semantan and then the raw water is pumped to a connecting basin at the tunnel inlet. From this connecting basin, the water is transferred to an outlet connecting basin through the tunnel by gravity flow and distributed to receive basins of the treatment plant via gravity pipelines.  The tunnel excavation was undertaken by using...
Post a Comment
Read more