General Engineering, BEng (Hons)

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Course Overview

Engineers are the skilled problem solvers who develop the products and systems in response to the evolving needs of future generations. Ongoing advances in computing power and the increasing use of integrated systems that link mechanical, electrical and other engineering systems together is creating new industrial sectors that need a sophisticated skillset.

Our BEng Engineering degree is an interdisciplinary General Engineering programme, and you will learn mechatronics, digital design, mechanical design and control systems, equipping you to design and build complex automated systems.

You will develop expertise in robotics, smart manufacture and systems engineering, and learn to apply your new skills to contemporary engineering challenges.

As more industrial and home devices start using sophisticated intelligent systems, people with a general engineering skillset are in increasing demand due to their ability to integrate these different systems.

Watch our course overview video by Dr Mike Clee and Dr Patricia Xavier

Why General Engineering at Swansea?

  • 7th in the UK for Graduate Prospects (Guardian University Guide 2025)
  • 8th in the UK for Teaching Quality (Guardian University Guide 2025)
  • 12th in the UK (Guardian University Guide 2025)

This course offers the opportunity for a Foundation Year, a Year in Industry or a Year Abroad.

If you do not have the required subjects or grades to enrol on BEng Engineering, you can apply for our BEng Engineering with a Foundation Year. On completion of your Foundation Year, you can progress onto BEng Engineering.

Your General Engineering Experience

This is a high-tech, highly practical degree with a strong theme of hands-on lab-based design and development.

You might be building your own sun-tracking solar-powered device charger, designing an assistive limb device for rehabilitating patients with weakened muscles, or developing the control system and building and testing a prototype of an autonomous car that can route find and navigate obstacles automatically.

All these tasks require you to integrate knowledge from different sectors, meaning you will find it easy to communicate and work with the tools from a variety of engineering and management professions.

Technological advances must be considered alongside the challenges of climate crisis, social unrest and resource depletion.

You will learn to consider technical requirements alongside ethics, for example, how the control systems you design for a driverless car makes decisions when multiple human lives are at stake in a potential crash, or how automated processes impacts job security for workers.

Change and innovation are permanent features of the mechatronics sector as device power grows. Therefore, you will also learn about managing and supporting colleagues through change processes, and what organisational conditions optimise for innovation.

Swansea has strong connections with industry, and you will be taught by individuals from companies such as Fujitsu and Siemens who have successfully led technological organisational change.

General Engineering Employment Opportunities

There are a range of careers available to graduates with an BEng Engineering degree, including advanced manufacture, robotics, automation engineers, data scientist, software engineering. Demand for this advanced and integrated skillset continues to grow as technology advances.

The degree is a fantastic launchpad for creating a start-up business and launching innovative smart products. We’ll develop your entrepreneurial mindset, and if you are interested in commercialising any of your ideas, we’ll give you support to start your own device-led business targeting industrial or home customers.

Modules

The first year will introduce you to the fundamentals of engineering analysis, digital design and mechanics, giving you the language and techniques to set you up in your engineering career. You will have a year long design and build module and a design project to apply what you have learnt to a novel mechatronic system, integrating sensors, control systems and mechanical output to develop an intelligent device.

In the second year, you will apply this skillset to designing medical devices, and develop a greater depth of understanding to develop your own control systems, sensors and actuators, specialising in either the advanced manufacture stream or the people-orientated management module options. There is also

In the third year, you will learn about manufacturing optimisation techniques, have your own mechatronic research project individually supervised by one of our academics, and work on a group project to design integrated systems in an industry-set design project. There are options to learn to create virtual worlds, learn data science techniques or further develop advanced manufacturing skills.

General Engineering, BEng (Hons)

General Engineering with a Year Abroad, BEng (Hons)

General Engineering with a Year in Industry, BEng (Hons)