In one of my last posts I talked a lot about how everyone is in a rush these days between the technology and tight budgets; everyone wants everything to be done yesterday. The point of my post was that this fast-paced approach has placed an inordinate amount of stress on all engineers because they are all trying to beat that invisible clock. However, one of the comments on that post, brought about another very important point – how is this fast pace and all of the new technology affecting engineering career development?
Younger engineers are being forced to work as quickly as possible because of shrinking budgets. The emphasis in many companies is no longer how the younger engineers are learning these new design techniques; instead everyone wants to know how quickly they can perform them. This kind of an atmosphere can have a devastating effect on the future quality of engineering documents throughout the industry. Think about it, how many engineers are rushing through their design work just to meet a budget or a deadline and not really fully understanding the theory behind what they are doing? How many engineers generate a cut/fill estimate using AutoCAD but and give the numbers to their client without thinking about if the numbers make sense from a practical standpoint – because they have never done the analysis without the computer? How many engineers draw 3 or 4 stormwater pipes into one manhole because they are trying to hurry up and finish their design, without realizing that it is not practical or cost effective to put that many pipes into one structure?
I am not making this up, I have seen all of these examples first hand! I have seen an engineer give a cut/fill estimate that was off by a thousand cubic yards because they entered the wrong input into AutoCAD, but they didn’t realize the 1,000 yard error because they never had to think about it without the computer.
I could go on and on, but engineers are about solutions not problems, so for those of you younger engineers out there reading this (or engineers who manage developing engineers) I recommend that younger engineers take the following steps to ensure that you properly develop your engineering design skills. Some of these points may apply more or only to civil engineering because that’s my background but others are applicable industry-wide:
- If possible, early on in your engineering career, work in the field on a construction site or at a manufacturing plant where you actually see the things that you will eventually design being built. This alone can be a game changer and drastically improve the quality and efficiency of your design work.
- Try to design one of your projects by hand. Do this one on your own time at home so you are not negatively affecting the project budget. This can even be done on an older project, where you are simply re-designing it for practice. The goal here is that you will have to learn the theory behind the design work. Some examples would include: performing land grading by hand rather than using AutoCAD, sizing a stormwater pipe using an equation and chart in a book rather than a sizing program, design a concrete beam or footing without using a computer program. I am not trying to say this will be done a regular basis, as we should leverage the technology to save time, but do it once or twice while you are still learning. Don’t just rely on the text book problems you did for homework in school, real-life engineering problems are seldom taught or learned about in textbooks.
- If you are designing something, look at a similar design that has already been built, whether it is a gear, car engine, or stormwater basin. Seeing something and then designing something similar will help you take more of a practical approach than if you are designing something you have never actually seen before.
These are just a few recommendations. I hope that you can share your own recommendations by leaving a comment on the bottom of this post and ultimately I hope that every young engineer that reads this post, follows one of these recommendations to ensure that they are learning engineering theory and not just engineering technology!
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To your success,
Anthony Fasano, PE, LEED AP
Engineering Management Institute
Author of Engineer Your Own Success
Anthony,
Good point,
I graduated with a mechanical engineering degree during a bad economy and ended up working in O&M in the wastewater treatment industry. Although it was not what I envisioned when I was in school, in hindsight it was an invaluable learning experience. I am now a staunch advocate that engineers should understand the operations side of a product / process before they design it. It is easy to design something that is perfect on paper and makes the operators job miserable or even impossible.
Thanks for the real-life example Gary – that’s the best way to explain it!
I couldn’t agree more with your point about learning how the computer program solves these problems.
Until the last few years I worked as a Steel Fabricator. Due to the size of the company I did all my design calculations by hand. Designing simple structures, detailing the members, and actually erecting them has provided a deep understanding of what is being designed.
As I now am a licensed engineer, the experiences that I gained in construction are priceless in practice. Often I reflect on projects that I previously built for ideas of what to or more importantly, what not to do.
Having performed the calculations to design structures by hand is CRITICAL to understanding that the design results a program is producing are accurate and reasonable. Being able to look a primary girder that the program says is “okay” but have a intutition that something is not correct is essential to engineering practice.
Too often in todays face paced and computer based society, engineers and trades people don’t know why something works. If engineers don’t know why they are getting the results the program is producing there is no way that they can be confident that their design works.
If we, as a profession, do not strive to understand why and how things work our profession’s quality will degrade just as the “tradesmen” have. Having witnessed the decline of talent in the trades installing our designs it is even more inportant that we be able to quantify, without a computer, what may be a safety issue.
Yes Tim!! What you describe is exactly why I wrote this post. I am glad that you are giving a first-hand description of how the hands-on design in your career helped you and I hope this post and all of the comments inspire younger engineers to learn the theories and not just the computer programs!!!!
Thanks for the feedback.
Hie, I am a university student doing fuels and energy engineering.May help me answer this question:
With the application of computers in the engineering department, how has engineering changed prior to the introduction of computers.
Good question Trevor, I became an engineer after the computers were being used, so maybe another reader can share, however I will say that they did everything by hand and in my opinion when you do that you are forced to really learn the material. Sometimes with these CAD programs today, engineers can get by with not knowing the material all that well and still create a design. The quality of the design will be average to poor and depending on the subject (i.e. a bridge), it could cause devastating failures and loss of life.
THANKS
I think every thing has its pro and cons.The advancement of technology has affected every portion of our lives.With these advanced computer aided tools engineering drawings has become a very versatile matter.
Thanks