Let's make the station more maintenance intensive!

[Frank_Stein]

Besides, let's be honest. People don't play scientist to cook up more medical chems for the doctors. People don't play genetics to clone people or distribute cool mutations to the crew. People don't play mechanic to help safeguard critical station infrastructure. No one plays miner to supply the station with ores. They play those jobs for the fun toys that they make for themselves personally. And nobody bitches at those jobs if they don't do those things. The only toys engineers have are spacesuits and yellow gloves, and they get those right at the start so there's really no benefit to them for doing their job. So why should they?

Eh, I disagree with that whole first part. Plenty of people do their jobs because it means having fun interactions with the crew AND getting to use neat toys.

Which is really where engineering needs improvement. You're right about there being little incentive for them. Setting up the engine is a fairly boring task they do alone, and repairs are slow and there's no one around to interact with while they do them, since no one without internals is going to stand around an airless room.

If Engineering needs anything, it's to make their jobs faster, more involved, and more unique.

For instance, give em metal foam canons for quick repairs as well as hijinx. Introduce a mechanic for selling off excess power for finacial gain.
Make the Engineering room more like Star Trek where they have to divert power to different systems. Meteor storm coming? Power up a new station wide forcefield. Magnetic storm shuts off communications? Temporarily sink more power into it to get them running again.
Let them buy/build some new equipment and machinery similar to the experimental generator. An atmospheric forcefield for bubbling off air leaks? More efficient APC batteries? Tesla coils?