Towards Developing Empathetic Engineers for The Rural Road Project Management

Abstract

Education of empathetic engineering for the rural road project management and professional excellence for young engineers is very important as the end product can highly impact the rural community.  The current research focused on the analysis of the concept from the explicit meaning of empathy of recent literature from five publishers through an advanced computer search. The goal of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework from a holistic list of empathy perceptions affecting the engineer in managing projects. Two research questions were addressed: first, what does empathy mean when the element of engineering is the centre of the study? and; secondly, from what perspective of project management construction stages does empathy influences engineer? Factors contributing to project failure can be categorized into three major factors namely physical and financial constraints, other minor issues, and empathy issues. Empathy issues are the combination of empathy keywords and empathetic perspectives that could be developed and incorporated in the management of rural roads during the feasibility study, planning, design, and construction stage of the project. Towards developing empathetic engineers and further reducing project failures, intervention through empathy training is a viable option for the enhancement of emotional intelligence and project management skill.