Shortage of engineers on Long Island delays projects, increases costs, leaders say

When Ian Hoffman, of Quogue, graduated in spring with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, he applied to nearly 70 companies for an entry-level job.

The University of Connecticut graduate was concerned he lacked internship experience that could have given him an edge in the competitive job market. So he was surprised when he received a $70,000-a-year offer from P.W. Grosser, a Bohemia-based environmental engineering firm, based on his degree and passion for problem solving.

“I got the job, I would say, less than a month before I graduated,” said Hoffman, 23, who helps design septic systems and oversees projects at P.W. Grosser.

Engineering firms nationwide and on Long Island are tapping new graduates like Hoffman as the industry is struggling with a shortage of experienced engineers, which has worsened since the pandemic, leaders and company officials said. The shortage, spurred by factors such as a workforce nearing retirement, a decline in students graduating with engineering degrees and growing competition from the technology sector’s artificial intelligence boom, is creating a bottleneck of projects and increasing costs for some projects, experts said.

“There is undoubtedly a shortage of engineers, and that competition for that same person is felt by every recruiting entity out there,” said John Evers, president and CEO of The American Council of Engineering Companies of New York (ACEC New York), which represents around 300 engineering firms statewide.

Richard Humann, CEO of H2M architects + engineers, a Melville-based civil and infrastructure engineering firm, said the shortage is creating fierce competition for talent, and companies are offering more attractive salaries.

“It creates a challenging cycle in business where you run the risk of having to compete by overpaying for talent because firms have the backlog and the work, but they don’t have the people,” Humann said.

‘Struggle to find the talent’

Paul Boyce, CEO of P.W. Grosser, where Hoffman works, echoed Humann’s predicament.

It’s just been a real struggle to find the talent.

- Paul Boyce, CEO of P.W. Grosser

“It’s just been a real struggle to find the talent,” he said of the company, which has 75 employees, of whom more than 20 are engineers.

Boyce wants to expand his staff by four engineers, but finding new employees and retaining staff, he said, has become incredibly challenging since the pandemic.

The company largely handles environmental engineering projects like wastewater management and brownfield remediation.

There are “great, bright folks coming out of school. But we’re really struggling to find folks with experience,” he said.

The engineering and architecture field is expected to have about 186,500 openings each year through 2034, according to projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment in those fields is projected to grow faster than the average for all occupations over that time.

The U.S. engineering market generated more than $387 billion in revenue in 2023, and is projected to reach more than $581 billion in revenue by 2030, according to Grand View Research, a San Francisco-based market research firm.

Humann said there are about 15 to 20 open engineer positions at H2M’s Melville office. The company has more than 600 employees across 14 of its offices, largely in the Northeast, giving it flexibility to move engineers to different regions depending on the urgency of projects, he said.

But smaller firms lack similar resources, one company official said.

“Hiring for new resources has been brutal,” said David Newman, vice president of engineering at Energia in Smithtown, an energy engineering consultant with 12 engineers on staff.

Newman said he has to fight for every hire.

“We’re essentially trying to poach people at competitive firms that aren’t happy and try to make offers to lure them away. It's a dog-eat-dog world,” he said.

The recruiting process, which normally takes one to two months, he said, took more than six months recently.

$1.2 trillion in federal funding allocated for infrastructure improvements as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

“As a small company I can’t always compete with big companies on salary. Our budgets are tight,” Newman said.

Infrastructure projects on hold

Since the pandemic, engineering projects have surged nationwide, driven by federal investments such as the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which allocated $1.2 trillion for infrastructure improvements, like road and bridge repair. By late 2024, $568 billion had already been allocated to more than 66,000 projects across the country, underscoring the scale of opportunity and demand for engineering expertise.

In 2022, the CHIPS and Science Act was signed, aimed at boosting domestic semiconductor production. More recently, the Trump administration and Intel announced an $8.9 billion government investment to further U.S. semiconductor production, signaling additional need for engineers.

But an existing shortage of engineers is creating a backlog of projects and firms say they are facing potential revenue loss.

Backlogs delay the timing of certain projects, which can lead to increased costs for building materials, said Mike Elmendorf, president and CEO of the Associated General Contractors of New York State.

“A delay typically means you’re going to end up paying more,” said Elmendorf, whose trade group represents contractors and related businesses statewide.

The longer necessary repairs are left undone, the work that’s needed becomes “more extensive and therefore more expensive,” he said.

H2M, which handles projects ranging from designing commercial and government buildings to building water treatment facilities and bridges, has passed on bidding on certain projects, hurting potential profits, Humann said.

It’s millions of dollars of missed opportunity.

· Richard Humann, CEO of H2M architects + engineers

“It’s millions of dollars of missed opportunity,” he said.

H2M was behind projects such as the development of Station Yards near the Ronkonkoma LIRR station and the expansion of sewer systems in Kings Park's downtown, the company said.

Our backlog is over 12 months. You want to have a ton of work in the pipeline, but you want to get to that work in a reasonable timeline.

- Paul Boyce, CEO of P.W. Grosser

At P.W. Grosser, Boyce said, “Our backlog is over 12 months. You want to have a ton of work in the pipeline, but you want to get to that work in a reasonable timeline.”

51% of engineering firms nationwide say they’ve had to turn down projects due to staff shortages

Roughly 51% of engineering firms across the country say they’ve had to turn down projects, according to a November survey from the American Council of Engineering Companies, a national trade and research organization. Twenty six percent of those respondents said they’ve turned down “good profitable projects.”

Investing in the future

As engineering firms struggle to fill open positions, some companies like P.W. Grosser said they are investing in training novice engineers, especially as an aging workforce of engineers near retirement.

Nearly 20% of civil engineers on Long Island are between the ages of 55 and 64, and 10.5% are 65 or older, according to data from Lightcast, a labor force researcher.

Shital Patel, an analyst at the state Labor Department’s Hicksville office, said the “relatively high percentages” of civil engineers in their mid-50s and older indicate the “retirement risk for this occupation is high.”

Khalid Hachil, 31, an electrical engineer with Stantec, a global professional services firm in sustainable engineering, architecture and environmental consulting, with more than 34,000 employees across six continents, said engineering companies haven’t done a great job putting their name out there.

Hachil, of Brentwood, who's been in the industry for more than a decade, said many people “don’t know the difference between an electrician and an electrical engineer,” and that lack of knowledge hurts both enrollment at colleges and recruitment efforts at engineering firms.

Newman at Energia said his company’s smaller size is an incentive to new graduates looking for jobs and gives them “opportunities for very quick growth and advancement. That’s how we fight for resources,” he said.

Local colleges also are seeing a shift among students moving away from some engineering fields to other STEM areas.

According to a 2022 report by the American Society for Engineering Education, the total number of civil engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded nationwide that year was 12,678, down roughly 8% from the 13,732 civil engineering degrees awarded in 2020.

Sean Bentley, associate professor of physics at Adelphi University in Garden City, said he has seen a decline in enrollment and interest in engineering programs in recent years. 

Adelphi’s physics department offers a joint-degree engineering program with Columbia University, where students who complete three years of physics at the school can transfer to Columbia for two years to earn a bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline.

“Our program overall is a lot smaller than it was,” said Bentley, who’s been with the university for more than 20 years. Around 2012, some 80 students might have been enrolled in the physics department, with about 50 or so going on to pursue engineering through the department’s joint program.

But these days, only a handful continue onto an engineering track, he said.

“Now our department as a whole, instead of 80 majors we’re at 30 and a third or less [of those students] are heading into engineering,” he said.

At Stony Brook University, levels of enrollment and graduation in its engineering programs have remained steady in recent years but some areas like mechanical and civil engineering have seen declines over the past decade.

“Last year we had about 28 civil engineer graduates, which was bit lower than previous years,” said Richard Beatty, senior associate provost for enrollment management at Stony Brook. “In 2018, we had 50 civil engineers.”

Babak Beheshti, dean of New York Institute of Technology's College of Engineering and Computing Sciences said, “visibility and the cool factor” boosts interest in computer science, which is resonating with a larger audience than engineering.

“AI, gaming, apps, social media…naturally, high school students get exposed a lot more to” computer science, he said.

To ensure that engineering firms build a pipeline of skilled workers, Hachil said companies need to invest in younger, less tenured employees and train them to meet the needs of the future.

To grow the pipeline of engineers, Evers said, ACEC New York is reaching out to community colleges to encourage students to major in engineering. 

The group also has formed a workforce development committee to bring engineering, construction and architecture firms together with other professional trade groups to discuss best practices for recruitment, Evers said. ACEC New York, which has awarded $1.4 million in scholarships to students pursuing engineering since 2002, expanded its scholarship program to community college students in 2023.

Like Hoffman at P.W. Grosser, Ashley Gambardella, 24, a recent hire at H2M, said she found a job before graduating with a master’s degree from Manhattan University in spring 2024.

Gambardella, who studied environmental engineering in grad school, said she applied for 15 to 20 jobs about eight months before she graduated. After a job interview in fall 2023, she was offered a job as a staff engineer at H2M in January 2024.

“I was in a pretty lucky position because I have friends who are doing the same thing and have trouble getting their feet on the ground,” she said.