Are you a real engineer?

By Ian Simpson FIEAust CPEng, MASCE

I am among many older engineers who view with growing alarm the idea that technical skills are secondary to "management". When viewed against the collapse three weeks ago of a bridge under construction in Canberra there is urgent need for a different emphasis on how engineering is taught, and how it is learned.

Clint Steele's article in Melbourne's The Age of 26 August drew attention to the reduced level of involvement of young people with things mechanical, such as existed in less affluent times when it was necessary to repair rather than discard faulty items. Consumerist attitudes, rapid obsolescence, and the increasing complexity of modern vehicles and appliances have all worked against the need to innovate to keep such items serviceable.

When not confronted with need, the processes lost are those of enquiry (how does it work?), experiment (what if I just try this?) and experience (well that worked and I know how to fix it next time). These mind processes provide a background reference for further learning: familiar territory is recognized when related subjects are introduced, and that vital attribute of Intuition starts to develop.

In the immediate post-war years and perhaps until the 70's there were relatively large numbers of young people working in the construction industry and government instrumentalities (SEC, Board of Works, Country Roads Board, Telecom etc) who were studying part-time, frequently on cadetships. It wasn't an easy way to go: night and weekend classes after putting in a full week working - typically, on the drawing board as a draftsman, or in the field building transmission networks, sewerage systems, roads. And the Snowy scheme. The skills embedded were priceless.

Then came the discovery by politicians that the annoying problem of being held responsible for competent management of government instrumentalities could be eliminated by the magic of Privatisation. Conventional wisdom was re-shaped to the idea that private ownership is always  the best way to go and would produce the lowest costs for the community for essential services, neglecting to state that the profits necessary to make privatisation work would not necessarily be returned to that community. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was the money that would flow from selling the family silver. Control was sold along with it: if it had been otherwise we should now have Hazelwood power station running on gas, if at all, and electricity meters would be something apart from profit-maximisers.

For those of us who did come up through the drawing-board, slide-rule, pencil-and-paper era, the advent of computers was not something to be feared. Suddenly, we could explore many more alternative concepts in a short time and when this was combined with the intuitive processes already in place it seemed like Nirvana. But the training processes of old were disappearing along with the nation's family silver and the new mantra of Management was taking hold, along with the slickly-packaged computer programs that promised to relegate intuitive technical skills to the museum.

For the present-day graduate, reliance on computer programs as the first step in tackling a problem may have inherent dangers. It is conceivable that the Canberra bridge collapse may be related to such an approach and the government-initiated report shows that errors were made in the design and detailing of temporary supporting members. As is frequent in such cases it was not the selection of member sizes that was critical but the details of how the various components went together, and the failure to include all load effects that were present.

Computer programs don't necessarily tell you such things, and (in the case of structural analysis programs) generally assume a certain set of standard conditions for members and joints, to expedite data entry. It should then be the task of the designer to correctly select restraint conditions at each joint and if such modeling is not correctly completed the end result can be seriously in error. The end result should look right: if it doesn't then bells should ring in the back-rooms of the mind and a few rough hand-calculations should be made to get a feel for what may be wrong. To do these things it is necessary to have a basic grasp of the principles involved: it's called Intuition, it comes in part from the things Clint Steele wrote about.

If rudimentary technical skills are not reinforced and developed within the first two years after joining the work force the chances are that they will be lost forever. Pursuing a management-oriented career from the outset can not only inhibit the development of intuitive technical processes, it may lead to a false sense of ability when the occasional need to engage in a design exercise arises. Where Rumsfeldian "unknown unknowns" are present we can make our greatest errors.

Ian

Ian's background is in Structural work and he spent most of my working life with the John Holland group of old, but in the last 15 years he has worked on a variety of projects throughout Australia and South East Asia. His particular interests are in marine works, heavy engineering and temporary works (probably the most dangerous of all engineering). Although partly retired he findd his services are still in demand.

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