Entry-level competency 10

[dozer]

Are we just having a run of bad luck at our company or is the level of competency of entry-level (say five yrs. experience and less) engineers going down in the US? I'm talking specifically in the structural engineering arena. Our last four hires have not been very familiar with any structural analysis programs like STAAD or SAP. They've displayed very little initiative when it comes to solving a problem that doesn't have a "cook book" answer. As a matter of fact, they don't even seem to know where to look in the "cook book" half the time. There fundamental knowledge of structures seems dubious at best.

For instance, when I discuss k-factors of columns in buildings none of them can offer any insight into what the current state of the art is. I would have thought having been in school much more recently than me, they would have something to say on the subject. I'm not even sure they realize the importance of understanding if the joint at the end of the column can sway or not.

Don't get too hung up on my example. This is just one of many examples. I'm wondering what other's are seeing in the workplace. I'm hoping four folks is not statisically significant and this is really not the state of what our universities are turning out.

I have some more I could say, but this is getting a little long and I would like to hear from you folks.

 

[GregLocock]

4/4 is enough to encourage some sort of review. I'd have a look at your recruitment policies, and think about why your recruiters are picking people who don't meet your requirements. Our graduate level recruitment is not dependent so much on interviewing techniques - we get lots of them in as interns during their degrees, that gives them a year to show whether they are the sort of people we want. At least one company I worked for had a 3 month honeymoon period - they put us up in a hotel (for free) and at the end of 3 months decided whether to keep each person (and then pay a normal relocation package) or wave them a fond farewell. Personally I thought as a technique it sucked at the time, but since you are after entry level recruits they'd probably enjoy it. I certainly did, not too sure about whether my liver did.

Frankly I doubt their courses say anything new about k-factors. I must admit I don't care if they can use software or not, universities have much more important things to do than to teach the basics of software packages.


Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[dig1]

Dozer,

My 2 cents....

I wouldn't expect that an undergrad (BS) would know the state of the art in k factors but would expect an grad (MS) student to know.

If your last four hires didn't know about the fundamentals of structural analysis I must agree with Greg that your hiring practices need to be reviewed.

I'd much rather hire someone who knows how to "do it by hand", at least basic moment distribution (simple frame), size a beam/column/connection/rebar/or any basic element, be able to determine contributary areas, etc than a STAAD wizard who could refine a mesh like no one else but didn't know that 12 feet of lateral movement due to wind/seismic load in a two storey building is a problem.

I see too many people telling me "It is what XYZ software told me."

Most of my work is in large pressure vessels and if Compress or PV Elite can't handle it people are lost. There are exceptions but it frustrating to hire a firm to do the work then have to re-do it so we have confidence in the work. I've experienced this with engineers on 4 different continents so it is not "dumb Americans" by any stretch. It is also at varying degrees of experience.

The biggest issue I see is that people are lazy in their work and don't want to look at the results and inputs to see if they make physical sense. These are not, for lack of a better word, stupid people. If the solution isn't one they have dealt with several times they don't want to review what applies.

I know I'm a little of your topic but I believe it all ties together.

 

[JAE]

Dozer: Being in structural like you - I would second what dig1 says above about MS degrees - generally an MS degree comes in with a more solid understanding of the basics. However, there are good BS graduates/EIT's out there and I think it depends on:

1. Their school and the quality of the teaching (not the research)

2. The individual's focus on engineering (for some its a job, for others its a passion)

3. The individual's previous work experience. I think this is really key. I know that there are a lot of big design firms out there where new, young engineering grads are given simple tasks, or drafting for the first few years of their careers. One guy I know was given the task of simply designing concrete retaining walls all day for two years...not a good quality experience even though it was in a very large, prestigous firm.

I would also agree with the above that knowledge of STAAD or any other software just isn't a high priority - We can teach - or they can learn - the specific software of my company fairly easily.

 

[BJC]

At the risk of being red flagged I would advise you to seriously check for GOM symptoms. That's "grouchy old man" I have seen it before and it's real. It happens when you reach a level of experience and competence and others just don't seem to be good enough.
It may be that you got four duds out of four but I would take a serious look at your organizational culture, your proceedures and the way you do work.

 

[HgTX]

The only structural software I had my hands on as an undergrad was a bit of ANSYS. As a grad student I got to play with more stuff.

Keep in mind that most civil engineering programs are general civil, and that there's only so much structural specialization undergrads can get. That's a big part of why I got my master's.

Hg

 

[dozer]

BJC, don't worry you're entitled to your opinion. As a matter of fact, I often ask myself have I just forgot what it was like to be new? At the risk of sounding big headed I do think there is a difference between the "new breed" and my contemporaries 20 (groan) years ago. No, we didn't know STAAD or anything like it right out of college. But we understood the concept. All we had to do was pick up the book and start reading to understand the syntax the program expected. These kids can't even apportion a load by hand. I'm not talking about not knowing how to tell the program what the load is. They don't even know how to compute it.

For instance, we had a duct that was being supported off of some roof framing. I had to explain the whole nine yards. The wind pressure on the duct, the shear that this produced at the base, the vertical reactions this caused because of overturning, the tributary area on a particular beam, how to lay it out to determine where the supports were landing on the beam and then finally how to input these loads in the model.

In my opinion, for somebody with 2 or 3 years of experience as this person had, the only thing I should have had to explain was how to use the program, which is what I think most of you are saying.

I am heartened, though, that none of you seem to think the general quality of engineers is dwindling (or am I putting words in your mouth?) I do think our hiring practices leave a lot to be desired, but before I took off down that road I wanted to see if we were just fighting a losing battle.

I have kind of moved away from the day to day operations so I don't have any input into the hires. My theory (and that's all it is) of hiring is different from the guys who have been responsible. I think you should ask candidates some technical questions. No, I don't expect them to be Einsteins but I do like to find out what they know and see how they reason through a problem.

The other extreme is you just try to judge if people will be a good fit personality wise and you just assume that anybody can be brought up to speed on the technical stuff. Personally, I reject this theory. Your responses have given me the confidence to assert to our management that we are doing a p**s poor job of hiring.

 

[JAE]

One other point - (I'm in the biz about 25 years so this sort of applies to me too) - is that after practicing engineering for many years, sometimes we forget just how stupid we were when we came right out of college.

I don't have a real good feel for the quality of engineering graduating today vs. then. I do know that today, with the tools we have in the computer, there are vastly different focuses on what we spend our time on. I use to hear stories from my older mentors (started engineering in 1927 to 1946) and they told of the hours and hours of time spent doing tedious math calculations to support the structural analysis.

Today, the computer does the math quickly and I find that many of my staff can more quickly visualize the effects of changing different parameters in a model.

 

[Maui]

What schools did these engineers graduate from?


Maui

 

[sms]

I think there are two very different problems here, one is lack of background and experience in your area of interest. You can't really blame a new grad for that.

The other is lack of initiative. Now that is a problem. I rarely blame anyone for a lack of knowledge, I do have a problem with those unwilling to put in the effort to learn.

 

[denoid]

I agree with JAE..."we forget just how stupid we were when we came right out of college". I remember the first few tasks I had to do on my first job. I did them OK, but I'm embarrassed when I remember how long it took me, until I gained experience and confidence.

I've been in the business for 30+ years (yikes), and what I see generally is the lack of confidence. If they seem to generally know the stuff, but aren't sure of their answer, I think it's a confidence thing, and I'd cut them some slack.

But you're right, Dozer. They should at least know where to go get answers (methods, design examples, etc.) out of a book. That would be my red flag on someone's competency.

 

[JAE]

Got another point here too -

My professor from grad school came up to me a couple of years ago at a conference and half-jokingly half-seriously asked me if I'd consider coming back for a PhD. He said that he has loads of candidates coming to him for the PhD program but that most of them don't want to get in the lab and do some real research.

He said something like, "They just want to sit in an office all day and hammer out little programs and graphs on the computer. They don't want to do any real work or any real thinking." (all paraphrased of course).

So that got me to thinking that there's lots of students overly enamoured with computers and not engineering.

 

[GregLocock]

Yup. Since university is supposed to be about teaching, and providing a background, I would have thought a uni would be the last place you'd expect to see physical tests and experimentation replaced by computer simulations. Sure it's cheaper for them to teach the kids FEA, rather than have them build structures in the workshop and break them, but which is going to provide a better feel for the materials and designing?

I can see the value, to some extent, in using spreadsheets for the results, and I certainly think it is better to write reports on a PC than by longhand, but that's more or less it. Using MathCAD for your maths, and FEA for your structural analysis, and so on and so forth is not, to my mind, a good way to understand the principles for most people.







Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[ScottyUK]

Far too many Structural guys in here... time for some input from other disciplines!

In my field - power generation - I'm certain that the standard is dropping. There are several distinct areas in which there is a drop year on year:

Basic engineering maths: in the UK school-leaver's grades rise every year, but the universities have to put on additional maths classes to make up the shortfall. Graduates at the end of their university education struggle to apply basic principles like Calculus to the real world. Mental arithmetic appears to have gone the way of the abacus too. I'll just get my calculator...

Practical ability: expensive to run for the educational establishments, I agree, but these kids graduate with an electrical engineering degree without having done electrical machines lab work, for example? The number of graduates who can't use basic test equipment correctly worries me. If they can't measure something accurately, more-or-less everything they do based on that measurement is suspect.




----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[flamby]

If you compare just the time of now and that of 25 years back, the career options have changed dramatically. The talented lot prefers Management and IT, so the drop in engineer's quality , and in particular, civil engineer's quality, is not astonishing. Engineering is no longer the craze in minds of young. It goes well with "trends and stretegies" of the current times and I think we will have to live with the average and bring out the best out of them.

Ciao.

 

[aggman]

I think I would like to put a younger spin on this thread. I graduated with my BS 3 years ago. I worked part time assisting in real design work my full senior year of college and then went to full time as soon as I graduated. One year later I returned to school part time to get my masters but I continued to work full time. I just received my masters this past December. I went structural the whole way. I graduated from a decent engineering school but not the best by any means (top 35). I think that younger engineers have a lack of understanding of real feel calculations. Industry puts a lot of pressure on the schools to make sure the graduating students can work analysis programs because they want to be able to use them as soon as they get out of school. But the result is a lot of new graduates pushing mouse buttons for two years drawing lines before they ever begin to do a calculation. The year after I took my very first structural analysis course beyond statics they quite teaching approximate techniques so that even the most basic engineer knows the stiffness method. I think this was even pushed by the ABET accredation board. I think that computer methods are great and highly needed, but I don't depend on it. I have always tried to be able to prove what the computer puts out. I think the biggest thing that helped me though was the year I spent working part time my senior year and the first six months after I received my BS. I did a lot of design calculations but they were hand calculations. (Size these columns or beams, analyze this portal frame, develop the loads and load cases, etc.) It was basic, but it got my feet wet and made me think about how structures responded. Then I spent time looking at the structures during and after they were built. This helped me to get a feel for what I was doing. Overall I think universities are doing a fairly decent job. Remember now there are pretty advanced techniques that will become common day as new engineers advance in there careers. With FEA, non-linear, soil structure interaction, etc. something has to give. Unfortunatly I think that some of the most basic things are suffering because of this. Then there is the whole side that new engineers don't have the initiative. I think there is truth in that, but I would say it was probably the same 25 years ago. I love to sit at home and read engineering textbooks, just trying to learn something new, or sharpen my skills. But I have also had more than one person tell me I am wacko (including my wife). It takes all types to make the world go round and it always has. To dozers original post I think that you would be better off hiring students with a masters degree if you are concerned with their technical abilities. I think that masters students already have proven that they are just not run of the mill (not to take away from any BS only out their...my closest mentor only has a BS and he is one of the sharpest people I know) and are willing to work harder and are more pationate about engineering. I can only speak for structural people though, as I don't think this is true across the board. Also the newer masters programs cator to the design professional. I took 27 hours of coursework...all in structural and did a 3 hour design project (that I spent about 450 hours on) for a total of 30 hours. The nice thing about this is that it allowed me to take more courses like plates and shells, FEA, basic non- linear, buckling analysis and other advanced topics that I wouldn't have taken otherwise. I would also suggest that you could do some testing by making the applicant sit down and solve a simple portal frame or something like that. This would help to determine the basic skills and problem solving ability of the applicant. The thing is with students today is that when you are in high-school if you are good in math then they say go into engineering. You will make lots of money and you will be good at it and you get to work with computers. So a lot of young engineers are engineers just because of this. That is not the reason to become an engineer and it shows once they are in the real world. Me, I struggled like heck to get through it. I got C's in three out of four calculus classes, but I worked my butt of to get those c's. I excelled in the physics - particularly newtonian physics which is why I went into structural engineering. It never came easy, but I was on the deans list from the beginning of my junior year on. I continue to work like that today and I think it shows. For many students it is just easy for them and because of that they don't have to strive to prove things to themselves. The issue with new engineers today is not so much the ability, but the work ethic. But I would say that 25 years ago you had the same problem and with proper selectiveness at the hiring stage you should hopefully be able to wean many of these people out.

 

[EddyC]

After working in Industry for 10 years, I sort of ended up in a Civil/Structural Consulting Firm for 3-1/2 years. The firm had about 50 employees. My impression was that learning anything was more by accident rather than by intent. Even though there were many seasoned knowledgable engineers, they weren't given the opportunity to pass along their acquired skills. The patent answer seemed to be: "We don't have the time & money for this!" I have now been working in an A/E Consulting Firm for the last 4 years. This employer has 35 employees. This place has the same "We don't have the time & money for this!" mentality. I get the impression that I may end up making the same design mistake for 5 years before I somehow discover that I have been doing it wrong. I also get the impression that the employers want to shift the burden of learning more onto the student/employee and the school than they ever did before.

 

[UcfSE]

I'm also relatively new (about 3 years experience and EI) compared to others who have posted here. Many students are exactly like what dozer described: they couldn't engineer their way out of a wet paper bag. They simply have no drive and think that if software can do it then hand methods are antiquated and useless. That's not to say that everyone is bad but it seems the majority is just lazy and doesn't realize that skills are earned. As far as software goes, I would be at a disadvantage because my current employer is too cheap to buy much of anything. I can understand not buying the $5000 FEA software if we don't use it but we should have some things to facilitate production. Most of the stuff I do is by hand or with spreadsheets that I've made with the exception of some 2D analysis and steel design software (no connections though lol). On the one hand that's good because I understand engineering much better than the typical Gomer you're running into, but on the other I don't have a lot of diverse software skills employers do look for.

 

[moltenmetal]

I'm a consumer of structural engineering services, not a structural engineer myself. But I've observed as a customer that there's a shortage of engineers, particularly young ones, with well-calibrated commonsense based on DOING and OBSERVING rather than merely calculating. That goes for my own area of practice as well as for structural.

It's tough to teach someone commonsense, and it's impossible to calibrate commonsense without providing the opportunity for young engineers to receive feedback on their designs- not just red marks on a drawing from some senior engineer without explanation, but actual physical observations of the consequences of design decisions they've made.

I think it should be mandatory for an engineer to work in a manufacturing or design/build operation for a time prior to going on to consulting for hire. Some consultancies are excellent, but many do not afford their staff, particularly the younger staff, any hands-on experience or even exposure to review the installation of their designs. They don't get the chance to see what problems their oversights caused, or what something looks like when it's done right. This is economic reality-driven for the consultants, but it sucks for both the engineers working there and for their customers.

Engineers who design without adequately calibrated commonsense or an appreciation for the work done by the people who install their designs and turn them into reality, give us all a bad name as a profession. Yes, some of that is 20/20 hindsight, but a lot of it is actually well-deserved.

Is this an educational problem? Perhaps so- but it's tough to teach this stuff at a university. You learn this by doing under the watchful eye of a mentor. That situation is sorely lacking in many firms out there- it's not just the recent grads' faults.

 

[Maui]

Universities typically do NOT share the same priorities as the companies that hire their graduating engineers. With some exceptions, the tenured professors who work at universities that grant MS and PhD degrees as well as BS degrees focus their efforts mainly on their research. They do this because the view that their employer takes toward them is based largely upon their ability to acquire external funding for their projects. Before professors are granted tenure their job security depends largely upon how much grant money they bring in. My alma mater used to skim at least 1/3 off of the top of any grant money that came in for overhead costs alone. If a professor is not able to financially justify his or her presence in the university by acquiring grant money, they will be terminated. Even if they are the best teacher that has ever graced the classroom, their skill will not save their job. On the other hand, they could be the worst professor in the department, but as long as they maintain a healthy and steady cash flow into the university, they will receive nothing but praise from the higher-ups. Teaching is not the #1 priority at these types of schools. A significant percentage of faculty members view teaching undergraduates as an unpleasent but necessary part of their job. Add to this the fact that the vast majority of these professors never held a job outside of academia, and you begin to understand the picture a little better.

Even though this is a contributing factor to the problem at hand, I can verify that there has been a fundamental change in the attitude that I have seen in my engineering classes. I have taught as an adjunct assistant professor in engineering at a major US University for the past eight years. The ability of the students to comprehend and utilize basic engineering concepts has declined for the last two years in my opinion. Students are coming into these classes ill prepared, and in general they seem to be lazier than their predecessors. By grading them on a curve (which I refuse to do) the message that they get is that they don't really have to understand the material completely. They just have to have a better grasp of it than some of the other students. Do this for four years, and you end up with some engineers who have an incomplete understanding of the basic principles. Get them out into industry, and you will see the results that Dozer has observed.