Resume engineers' novel (5)
I believe the answer is:
renew
'resume' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'engineers' novel' is the wordplay.
'engineers'' becomes 're' (I've seen this in other clues).
'novel' becomes 'new' (synonyms).
're'+'new'='RENEW'
(Other definitions for renew that I've seen before include "Revive" , "Transform born-again" , "Renovate" , "Restore to original state" , "Repeat for next year" .)