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Global Engineering Work Force Project

With the continued decline in cross-border barriers and obstacles, companies that perform engineering work in the EPC industry can develop competitive advantages through the expansion of their presence in global markets. However, with resources dispersed in various geographic locations, global companies have been facing many challenges related to the integration of these services, both managerially and technologically. With improvements in modern communication technology, it is now possible to adopt virtual teaming strategies that facilitate better communication and management of global design teams.

Many questions related to the successful implementation of these global design teams remain. These include:

This research seeks to address the above questions by developing a systematic methodology to guide global designers to successfully develop or optimize their global engineering workforce. The results will provide a decision support tool to evaluate if the company should engage in the use of a global engineering workforce, and if so, techniques should they pursue or improve to maximize the benefit from the global engineering team to the company or a project.

Penn State