Engineering degrees continue to create opportunities for lucrative, meaningful careers for young people in Italy, a country where youth unemployment approaches 20%. With national and European Union prioritization of digitalization, automation, healthcare, and sustainability, electrical engineers, computer engineers, biomedical engineers, and environmental engineers are especially in demand. While many of the entry-level positions are at engineering and design firms, there are also opportunities for recent graduates on the owner’s side. This includes positions working with government agencies implementing infrastructure projects and with private companies like Hill International, a project and construction management firm that specializes in representing owners and protecting their interests on some of Italy’s largest and most significant construction projects.

Why Owner’s Side?

Owner’s representative firms like Hill manage risk and promote project success in line with an owner’s expectations—usually on-budget, on-schedule, and safe delivery of an asset that performs at a quality specified in the contract documents. Hill’s professionals do this with a range of management consultancy and advisory services, including but not limited to:

• Helping owners develop and implement formal project governance structures
• Applying for funding and managing compliance with any funding requirements
• Creating risk registers and mitigating risk where possible
• Advising on delivery methods
• Managing procurement of design and construction services
• Helping select and setting up construction management software
• Reviewing and commenting on design documents
• Generating independent cost estimates to validate designer and contractor estimates
• Managing any change to the project plans throughout design and construction
• Managing the project schedule
• Liaising with stakeholders and third parties
• Coordinating between the many different technical disciplines involved with a construction project to promote efficiency and prevent clashes
• Customizing formal communications plans
• Inspecting work installations to control quality
• Reporting on project progress and proposing solutions when challenges arise
• Documenting project performance to protect the owner in case there should be any claims
• Managing close-out and handover activities

The engineering skillset is crucial to owner’s representative services, and at Hill, engineers work closely with architecture experts, construction managers with a background in the trades, legal

professionals, and project management specialists to add value for each of our clients throughout their project’s life cycle. The results are efficiently delivered and impactful assets in every conceivable sector, from sustainable hospitality facilities to hospitals equipped with state-of-the-art building systems and resilient transportation infrastructure.

A Foot in the Door & Continued Professional Development

Hill partners with universities around the world to engage engineering students and recent graduates and introduce them to the world of owner’s representative services through hands-on

internship programs. In Italy, Hill offers internships to students at the Scuola Master Fratelli Pesenti, a prestigious post-graduate institution affiliated with the Politecnico di Milano. The engineering internships are designed to lead to full-time employment, but even after the internship period ends, Hill prioritizes continued on-the-job education for our junior engineering employees.

 “The job market for engineers is much different today than when I finished school in the early 2000s, and I don’t mean just because of the growth of this or that industry,” says Hill’s Country Manager for Italy Andrea Tota. “Even after they get a foot in the door, the complexity of today’s projects in every sector demands that junior engineers continue their education well into their professional roles.”

Andrea explains that Hill facilitates the growth of junior employees through cross-generational project teams, with early-career professionals collaborating with mid-level and senior leaders across the project life cycle. This allows Hill’s more experienced staff to share technical and leadership skills honed over decades with the next generation, give regular feedback in a supportive environment, and provide junior employees with a structured entry to the complexity of real construction projects.

“Actively participating in meetings with clients and their project teams, struggling through challenging technical problems with their colleagues, having real responsibilities on meaningful projects—these are formative learning experiences for new engineering professionals and critical for the development of soft skills, such as communication and teamwork, which are absolutely necessary in our industry,” adds Andrea.

Hill also provides all employees with access to our in-house learning and development tools, such as Hill University. Hill University is an award-winning platform that houses myriad educational content, including videos, e-books, and courses in a wide variety of project and construction management disciplines. It also features customizable learning pathways that provide hours of focused training on specific topics, including preparatory materials for several industry-recognized credentials. The platform helps Hill employees enhance their technical and leadership skills throughout their careers.

In addition, Hill has a tuition reimbursement program and partnerships with institutions of higher education around the world, which help Hill employees pursue degrees and continued education at the university level.

The Impact of Tomorrow’s Leaders Today

By creating professional development opportunities for recent graduates on our project teams and through in-house resources and educational partnerships, Hill is building a pipeline of

engineering leaders at our company and throughout Italy’s infrastructure industry. However, Hill’s approach is not only a one-sided investment into future talent. Andrea emphasizes the value and innovation that junior employees add to our organization today.

“Hill’s approach involves helping junior employees progress towards the next level in their careers, yes,” says Andrea’s colleague Senior Development Manager Ferdinando Ferrari Bravo, who works with the Order of Engineers of the Province of Milan to support the growth of the engineering profession throughout Italy. “But we also prioritize empowering junior employees where they are, so that they can bring innovation to our project assignments through their enthusiasm and familiarity with the industry’s latest technological solutions.”

In fact, Ferdinando sees junior engineers and their collaboration with mid-level and senior colleagues as essential to Hill’s competitiveness. “Cross-generational work is a real differentiator for Hill in Italy,” he goes on. “We’re committed to it because we know that each generation of engineers brings a different set of skills to the table. Our senior engineers have an unmatchable understanding of our industry and our organization, while our mid-career professionals have strong technical competencies and make excellent team leaders, capable of bridging generational gaps and navigating change in a balanced way. Properly supported by mid-level and senior staff, young engineers can provide fresh perspectives, help futureproof our organization and our clients’ projects, guide upskilling and reskilling priorities for their more senior colleagues, and prompt the reevaluation of even the most rigidly established processes. Bringing all these elements together fosters innovation for our company, our clients, and their projects, and without innovation, there is a risk of falling behind.”

Hill International is committed to investing in the next generation of Italian engineering talent and fostering innovation through cross-generational work. To learn more about our available job opportunities in Italy for recent engineering graduates, reach out to [email protected]. For general information about a career with Hill, please visit www.hillintl.com/careers.