I would not wait to go to somebody for help in this area as these things can take a while and putting off something like this can make things harder to follow the path you want to take in the future.
On the other hand, some good ol' elbow grease and puttin' the nose to the grindstone can help a lot. Discipline is a great thing to have and can be developed. If your friend does continue or even if they do not continue with engineering, they should start paying attention to how they learn. What is the type of instruction being given when they grasp concepts? Do they learn as the teacher is writing on the board? Do they reinforce concepts when they practice problems in class? Do they learn more from reading the textbook and working on the practice problems in the book and when doing assignments? How are they learning in other classes besides math? What about physics, chemistry, and even the langauges, arts and social sciences such as english, french, design, art class, history, or social studies?
Can they get textbooks converted to pdf format to be read by their computer to the student in audio format?
In the end, it sounds like your friend has lot of work ahead of them. However, some of the smartest people I knew in university had learning disabilities. They found out how to cope with them and by doing so they gained a lot of experience and developed a good work ethic in the process.
In the meantime, I suggest working on some of their own projects for experience. Check out MAKE magazine and website, the Instructables website, WISC-ONLINE and other resources of this type.