Higher pay, longer internships proposed to attract students to architecture and engineering careers

Many student interns at engineering firm Beca have said they would like their internships to be longer than the usual 20 weeks.

Mr Galvin Chua, Beca's country manager for Singapore and Myanmar, said roughly half of the firm's about 15 interns per year ask for their internships to be extended.

While he said that their usual internships of about 20 weeks are sufficient for learning, the extensions allow interns to see through projects and tasks they were assigned.

Mr Chua, who himself joined Beca first as an intern, said that the firm also offers good-performing interns full-time roles upon graduation, and finds that they are like "seasoned employees" when they return, which justifies starting salaries that are higher than those who had not interned there.

Structured and longer internships. Higher starting salaries for new hires at the companies where they had interned. These are among the recommendations of a task force set up to improve the attractiveness of architecture and engineering jobs in the built environment (BE) sector.

The Taskforce for Architectural and Engineering Consultants, set up in September 2024, was co-led by Second Minister for National Development Indranee Rajah.

On Sept 5, she announced the publication of the task force's 21-page report.

"We want to inspire the younger generations to join the BE professions to become architects and engineers. A career in the BE sector is one that has lasting impact. Their imprints can be seen all around us - whether it is our towering skyscrapers, underground infrastructure or our homes," she said.

Ms Indranee was speaking at VivoCity at the launch of the inaugural Building Singapore Festival, which aims to get younger people interested in the built environment sector's work.

The task force also looked into possible ways to help the built environment consultancy sector grow so that Singapore's infrastructure can maintain its high quality.

One of these ways recommended by the task force is to discourage the practice of submitting low-ball bids for projects, which "creates an unhealthy business environment where firms prioritise winning contracts through low prices, instead of competing on quality", said Ms Indranee.

The report follows a 2021 survey by the Singapore Institute of Architects, in which only seven in 100 architecture graduates said they will stay in the profession for the long haul.

A more recent survey conducted from November 2023 to January 2024 by the institute's Young Architects League found that of about half of 190 respondents working in architecture consultancies were thinking of leaving their companies in the next year, citing reasons such as poor remuneration and work-life balance.

The report comprises 11 recommendations over five focus areas: attraction and retention of talent; encouraging healthy competition; transforming the built environment sector; lifting the morale of workers; and improving the capabilities of industry associations.

Among the recommendations are a structured internship programme that is longer than those that tertiary students undertake as part of course requirements, and promises higher starting salaries if interns take up full-time roles at the companies where they had interned.

These recommendations were crafted in response to findings that firms had difficulty attracting and retaining talent due to workers' concerns over low remuneration and a heavy workload, among others.

Ms Indranee said that the task force consulted more than 400 people, including students, working professionals and industry leaders, before making its recommendations.

The Building and Construction Authority (BCA), which is in charge of the built environment industry's development, also announced the "enhanced" internship programme - a recommendation by the task force.

Participants in the programme have to intern for at least 30 weeks, receive internship allowances of at least $1,500 monthly, and have higher starting salaries that are above the market rate if they join their internship firm upon graduation.

How much higher the starting salary will be is for the employer to decide, though BCA noted that the market rate salary can be benchmarked against the gross monthly median salary for fresh graduates from built environment courses, which was $4,100 in 2024.

BCA said that the higher starting salaries recognise that students who have completed the structured internships have "improved readiness to contribute to the workplace".

In comparison, students who intern as part of their course requirements currently do so for about 20 weeks, and receive monthly allowances of about $1,000 to $1,500. Whether these internships are compulsory depends on students' institution and course of study.

Under the enhanced internships, interns will also be assigned dedicated mentors, who will guide them in areas such as career development.

BCA said that the Professional Engineers Board and Board of Architects are exploring if the extended internships can count as qualifying experience towards professional registration requirements, which will shorten the time that these interns need to clock to become registered professionals.

For a start, the structured internship programme will be offered to only about 50 students per year who major in civil engineering or architecture from four tertiary institutions - Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore Institute of Technology, and Singapore University of Technology and Design.

Twenty firms have committed to host the internship programme, which will be offered to students progressively from 2026 and will not impact the student's graduation timeline.

Final-year NUS architecture student Sabrina Mahbub, 23, who recently completed an internship with architectural firm Aedas from May to August, said she would have liked to intern for longer to work with different teams across the firm, or possibly do more in-depth design work.

Ms Sabrina said that students who take on the structured, longer internships will likely have to juggle academic coursework with their internships. But she sees benefits in this arrangement, such as being able to seek their internship mentor's advice on schoolwork, as well as quickly apply lessons learnt in the classroom to real-life scenarios at the office.

Associate Professor Pang Sze Dai of the NUS College of Design and Engineering said it is common for his civil engineering students to intern in the day, and return to campus for evening classes.

This arrangement has resulted in students being more engaged in classes, he said, as they bring problems they face in the workplace to discuss in class, which makes learning more directly applicable.

To discourage companies from competing based on low prices instead of quality, BCA said that by the end of 2025, the government will extend an ongoing pilot to more public sector projects.

Since March 2024, bids for public sector consultancy tenders with an estimated construction project cost of $50 million and below will be disqualified if they fall below 70 per cent of the median price bid.

This measure will be expanded to public sector projects worth up to $100 million by the end of the year.

President of the Association of Consulting Engineers Singapore Chuck Kho, who was part of the task force, noted that while the impact of this move will be limited as many public sector projects are worth more than $100 million, the hope is that it will be expanded to more projects in the future.

He hopes that moves by public sector developers to award tenders based on quality rather than fees will also cascade to the private sector, where developers are "practical" and willing to paying no more than market rates.