About Us – AEA

Introduction

Afghanistan Engineers Association (AEA) operating in multiple contexts for the development of the engineering knowledge, understanding and skills of the Afghan engineers. The contexts academic, social and cultural. Particularly this proposed initiative is for the support of the Afghan engineers in the academic context. The initiative has been developed in one of the divisions of the five divisions of AEA. The division is educational and professional in which we design…

and implement capacity building and development programs, hold conferences and occasions concerned with the equipping of engineers with cotemporary professional trainings. We offer the trainings to individuals that are eager to enrich their understandings and expertise. Moreover, we undertake extensive training programs for companies who are in need of such kind of trainings for their staffs.

The trainings we are providing are certified by credible academic agencies. The materials being taught at AEA are compatible to the market demands; the trainings we offer equip a trainee to be well accepted in engineering entities.
Due to the lack of coordination, cooperation and to an extent conflict of interests among engineering universities, colleges, and institutes, these entities teach a variety of subjects; the engineering codes being taught are different; the methods undertaken varies; and eventually the donors supporting these entities are not streamlining them to act in alignment with the academic goals in a national level.
The universities coordination department at AEA works for the integrating and communicating of Afghan engineering universities. In this department efforts are toward the development of the engineering universities to a direction of market demand and toward an alignment of the national needs to the engineering human resources. The curriculums of every university is evaluated by the educational and professional division the department of universities coordination. In comparison to the prevalent trends in terms of the practicing skills of an engineer required in engineering projects, proper suggestions are made for the universities.
Here, at AEA the department of engineering universities coordination has developed our training materials that have to the possible extent eliminated the conflicts of interests. For instance, a reinforced concrete structural design course is taught by the instructor who is well knows about the details of the materials being taught in various colleges and universities. Accordingly, he has prepared his handouts, references and other supplementary materials so that students could not be confused with the contents of the course that they will take.
Engineering students, technicians on their own behalf or being introduced through their employers are given the chance to be trained. Holding that there is an expressed need for the distinguishing of potential engineering experts, AEA in coordination with other relevant bodies has developed a plan based on which, engineers would be rated.
The trainers at AEA are distinguished credible national universities lecturers. They have higher education from national universities inside the country and abroad. We have trainers in the level of Bachelor, Masters, and Doctorate. The materials that they have prepared for the purpose of teaching is both developed in a manual manner and through the usage of software. Alongside the theory, that has been being taught in our classes, our trainers are taking the students on site to equip them with the practical knowledge of some subjects that are really crucial to be learned.

Need Assessment

A need assessment is a systematic approach to studying the state of knowledge, ability, interest, or attitude of a defined audience or group involving a particular subject. In order to design effective capacity development programs, Afghanistan Engineers Association use needs assessments to learn about important issues and problems faced by Afghan engineers in an individual context or in an institutional context. We will undertake methods to learn…

what has already been done and what gaps in learning cotemporary engineering trends remain. This will allow us to make informed decisions, thereby extending the reach and impact of the capacity development.

For extension, the first goal of needs assessment are nearly always the same. The first goal is to learn what our audience already knows and thinks, so that we can determine what engineering knowledge areas are needed to be improved. As second goal is to understand what we can do to make our educational products more accessible, acceptable, and useful to our clients.
Our thoughtfully performed need assessment will provide the following:
Impact. Insights about how the trainings can impact the trainees
Approaches. Knowledge about training approaches that may be most effective;
Awareness of existing programs and of gaps in available training to enable efficient use of resources
Outcomes. Information about the current situation that can be used to document outcomes;
Demand. Knowledge about the potential demand for future programs
Credibility. That our program is serving the target audience, an important part of communicating greater competence and professionalism to funding authorities (USAID) who want to know a program or product’s impact.
A need assessment is conducted so that our trainees can verify their own level of knowledge and skill, their interests and opinions, or their learning habits and preferences. Collecting and analyzing needs assessment data will allows us to describe the “gap” between what exists and what is needed. Filling that gap becomes the purpose of AEA. Afghanistan Engineers Association will perform the need assessment directly and indirectly.

Direct Need Assessment

Analyzing our previous records and amalgamating it with the researches that we are going to conduct, Afghanistan Engineers Association will perform the need assessment that would be more specific to the needs of individuals and entities. The assessment we are going to undertake, is planned to be performed in a tentative manner for some sample entities and the results are going to be treated for the rest of the entities. For individuals, we will develop questionnaires and distribute to individuals operating in engineering contexts of public engineering entities and private engineering entities.

Indirect Need Assessment

Based on our memorandum of understandings with some data providing centers such as CSO (Central Statistics Organizations) and some credible public and private universities, Afghanistan Engineers Association will collect data from our partners and will analyze them so that we could have a clear image of the situation prior to holding the required capacity development training.

Timeframe

As mentioned previously, Afghanistan Engineers Association believes in consistency. So far the trainings and capacity development initiatives have been not undertaken more than 5 years. Afghan workforce development programs exist, but their lasting is a matter of concern. As a new starting and scratching line, Afghanistan Engineers Association is going to undertake the delivery of the above mentioned programs for a time period…

of one year starting from Oct 2020 to Oct 2022. Later we will propose the extension of the initiative based on the achievements and evaluations.

Geographic Coverage

Afghanistan Engineers Association has offices in multiple locations of Afghanistan. Based on our records the students and engineering or management practitioners are usually from the following five zones: