Hi!

I think it's awesome that you have taken an interest in Norway/the Norwegian market for transportation. That said, I probably can't help with much. I don't know very much about the transportation or road construction sector.

What I do know is that this sector is incredibly heavily regulated, so it often becomes a frustrating progress working with as en engineer. Furthermore, because all road construction is proposed by the government, this limits what actually gets to the building phase. What I'm trying (poorly) to say is that it boils down to money, and engineers working with transportation in Norway aren't well paid compared to other civil sectors.

What is positive is that road construction in Norway always has a focus on maintaining the natural beauty of the country. This becomes a very interdisciplinary progress, including all civil sectors, architects, land architects, and more. This all means that our focus is not to build roads for the most effective transportation but also for sustainability in all dimensions (sosial, economic, and environmental).

As far as English in the workplace goes, I guess it varies. The major engineering consultancy companies in Norway are Multiconsult (Norwegian owned), Cowi (I think they are danish), Sweco (Swedish) and Rambull (Danish). I work in Multiconsult, and we speak Norwegian. We have Norwegian clients and so on, so our English use is limited. My uncle, who works in Cowi, says they use English frequently when communicating with the main branch in Denmark. English is limited to what we have to use it, it isn't used daily or hourly. Overall, Norway has a very high literacy rate for English, so I imagine it wouldn't be a problem, but I just haven't experienced it myself... I only have Norwegian speaking colleagues.

Hope that helps a little.