How to Get Green Engineers Some Horse Sense? 18

[KernOily]

I have green engineers on my staff that don't know which end of a hammer to apply to the nail.

Without sounding too much like an old furt curmudgeon (I ain't THAT old), the new crop of engineers has me worried. They can run a computer (well, mostly) but have zero horse sense, no hands-on manual skills, feel for the way things go together, and know nothing about the practical side of machines or processes. I can't send one of them out to the field to have an intelligent conversation with a welder or a crew lead.

30 years ago, kids built models, had Erector sets and Lincoln Logs, made jewelry, rode mini bikes and go-carts, did weavings and sewing, banged boards together to make a treehouse, and just generally tore stuff down and put it back together again. In so doing one learns invaluable lessons that you just can't learn any other way.

I really think the primary and secondary educational strategy in this country over the last 25 years is partly to blame. The "everyone must go to college to support the upcoming future service economy" is now coming home to roost and kicking us in the shorts.

I am really tempted to start having them do the oil changes on my truck. That might be a start.

I'd love to hear what you guys are doing about this. Might be a lost cause. Save me from my curmudgeonly malaise. Pete

 

[zdas04]

People have told me that my 5-day Unconventional Gas Operations Engineering course has opened a few young eyes. You might think about doing something like that. JM Campbell has a version of it (last time I looked at the material it lacked a drilling section and the deliquification/artificial lift section was weak, but the rest looked to be in the same universe as mine. The problem with public courses is you can only send 1-2 guys to it and it turns into party time. With an in-house class you can get an entire work group in the same room and that creates competition that is really healthy.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[MikeHalloran]

Hell, have 'em change the oil in the company fleet.
... and rebuild the engines.
--- and paint the shop.

On second thought, maybe you need to start them off with a kid's birdhouse kit.

At least encourage them to attend the DIY classes at Home Depot.

----------

Education seems to oscillate between practice and theory, with a period of ten years or so.

I envied my friend who went to a different college and had to build his own handcranked drill, from chuck to handle, including cutting the bevel gears.

We were encouraged and allowed to use the machine shop, until a grad student managed to get his hand caught in a belt sander; then the shop manager was allowed to retire, and the curriculum changed. I learned a lot from that cranky old man, and now I understand why he was cranky.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[rotw]

I like Zdas rational reaction who saw an opportunity instead of showing sympathy which is by the way the sort of discussion the original post was looking for. Sorry no offense.

 

[pennpiper]

All good ideas for solving a problem that is probably not going away soon. I feel the problem started when Engineering companies stopped being run by Engineers and started being run bu Accountants.
There was a time when (at least where I came from) a new hire employee went through training classes to bridge from school to the real world. I don't see that being done today. Training classes today would take money that is perceived to be better spent on Bonuses for the Executives.
There is one segment of culture where this does not happen. Read the following and think about it.

A Conversation
(What if engineering companies thought about training this way?)
By James O. Pennock

The following article is a work of fiction. It portrays a hypothetical conversation that has not happened yet. The setting is a private executive box at a major sports stadium before the start of the final championship game (American Football, European Football, etc.). The venue was selected by these two gentlemen not only for the entertainment value but also for the privacy. There are only two people present in the private “Sky Box” suite. The first person (we will call Adam) is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of one of the world’s largest EPCM companies. The second person (we will call Bill) is the President of Project Operations (PPO) for one of the world’s largest energy conglomerates who is currently finalizing a bidder list for the FEED phase for their next “World Class” mega project worth upwards of 5 Billion US dollars.
To set the scene, the game has not started yet and the two men have spent the past two hours getting to know each other and watching the pre-game activities on the field.
Down below both teams have been on the field, one team at one end of the field and the second team at the other end. They have been going through various warm-up exercises, drills and mock plays.

Now let’s pick up the conversation.

Bill: Adam, I really appreciate that you were able to get tickets to this game. We have had the privacy we need and yet we will both be able to enjoy our favorite sport.
Adam: Oh! It was no problem getting tickets, I own stock in the home team and this is the company’s Sky Box.
Bill: That’s great! Say, I have just been thinking. Look at those players down there.
Adam: Yah, lots of talent worth a lot of money. What were you thinking?
Bill: Well, Think back a few years. Every one of those men started playing this game in the street in front of their house when they were just kids. They may have played this game for many years in the street and sand lots. Then in Secondary or High School they played three or four years in a more formal organization with real coaches and a play book full of plans for success. Later they attended a University where they played for four more years at an even higher level with more complex problems and adversity. After that the lucky ones are drafted by the professional organizations much like these two teams who will play here today.
Adam: Yep! That’s the way it is in the big leagues.
Bill: Adam, don’t you think there might be more to the picture than just that.
Adam: What do you mean?
Bill: Well here is the way I see it. The players learned to play this game as that kid in the street. Then went on to the next level and the next level and the next level each with three months of pre-season training, two-a-day workouts, club-house meetings going over the playbook. All week between games they have more two-a-day work-outs and meetings to review post-game films to discuss what they did well and more importantly what they did wrong. They also review game films of their next opponent to learn the strength and weaknesses they will see. On game day, just like what we have seen down there they warm up, run patterns, practice kicks and do special drills to sharpen their timing and focus. They knew how to play this game when they got out of High School. They knew how to play this game HARD when they got out of the University. Don’t you think that all this training now is a big waste of money and time?
Adam: GEE! Bill you can’t be serious! That training for those guys is absolutely not a waste of time and money. I don’t know how you could even think such a thing. That training is what makes a winner. That training in what got these two teams here today. And as a stockholder of I want a return on my investment. I take an active interest in my teams training schedule. If our coach did not have pre-season training or weekly training or pre-game warm-ups he would soon find himself out of a job. And you can take that to the bank! Yes sir! Training is what makes a winner.
Bill: I’m glad to hear that’s the way you feel. So tell me what kind of training do you give your new employees?
Adam: Training, new employees? We don’t need to train new employees. We hire only the best. We bring them in, give them the HR manual, set them at a desk, provide them with a computer and they are expected to go to work.
Bill: So for any new employee you believe what they say on their resume, right? So you expect each of them to read your mind and know exactly what you expect and when you expect I, is that right?
Adam: Of course! What else can you do?
Bill: What do you do about current employees? As you well know technology is always moving up and there are new thing to learn. Do you have any kind of a training program to raise or improve the level of expertise of your current technical and management personnel?
Adam: No, no we feel that in-house training is just a waste of time and money.
Bill: If your company was to make it on to our bidders list and your bid was chosen, what kind of Pre-Project training would you conduct to insure the team, and I mean all of the team is all using the same play book?
Adam: We hold the Project Manager responsible for those things.
Bill: Well then let me ask you this. After the project has been completed, what kind of Post-Project meeting do you hold? Do you have any kind of a review with ALL of the project members to review what you did well and what you need to do better the next time?
Adam: Really, Bill I think that is just a waste of time and money.

At this point the game started and the two men turned their attention to the contest. Both teams played hard as the lead switched first from one team then to the other. At halftime the visiting team had just a three point lead as the two teams went to the locker rooms for their mid game rest and pep talk.

We pick up the conversation again.

Bill: So what you are saying is that you think that the game down there on that field today is more important than my five billion dollar project. Is that right?
Adam: What are you saying?
Bill: Well just before the game started we were talking about training and you said that training is a waste of money except for people who play games. With that attitude I must assume that you think that the game down there on that field today is more important than my five billion dollar project. Is that right?
Adam: Whoa! Now I see what you mean but Bill, I have never seen any kind of training in this business that replicates what a sports team does and I doubt that you have either.
Bill: Not true Adam.
Adam: Do you mean to tell me that someone in this industry, one of my competitors has “spring training” for new hires?
Bill: Yes Adam that is just what I am telling you, “spring training” and more. Here read this.

Adam takes the paper Bill offers and reads:

“As a new employee you can expect 80 hours of formalized discipline specific training including current company computer programs and another 80 hours of informal training to familiarize yourself with our clients, processes and nuances of the jobsite environment. You’ll also be assigned a mentor to help you acclimate. For employees who show initiative, you will be rewarded with promotion opportunities and the vast array of career paths existing within our Company framework.”

Adam: Wow! That must be very expensive.
Bill: In my discussions with them they shared that this program is not the only thing they do. Before every project starts they pull the assigned management and supervision team together and spend as much as a week putting together a Project Execution Plan. They review past projects done for this Client. They review past projects of the same type for pitfalls and lessons learned. They also review past projects that were installed in the same geographic region and climate conditions. The management and supervision is held responsible for passing on all the key project issues as new people are assigned to the project. And that is passed right down to the lowest level of each member of the team.
At three strategic points during the project: the end of the FEED stage; at the 50% point of detailed design and at the start of construction there are meetings held on the project for management and supervision to insure that every one is “on the same page.”
After the project is completed the management and supervision again come together to go over the lessons learned from the project. The outfall of this project closeout meeting is used by the next project and by discipline departments to update and refine their training program.
Adam: Again I say that must be very expensive.
Bill: I would bet that they don’t spend as much on that program as your company spends every year on this “Sky Box” and the other support you are giving to that team down there on the field. That is why I said that you think that the game down there on that field today is more important than my five billion dollar project.


The bottom line of this fictional conversation is about the relationship of spring training in professional sports vs. technical, administrative and management training in the process plant EPCM profession. What do you, the readers think? Could this conversation take place? What importance should an EPCM company place on training? Will Adam’s company make the bidders list? Makes you stop and think doesn’t it?



James O. Pennock is a part-time consultant in the Tampa, Florida area. He has more than 45 years of process plant piping engineering and design experience. His experience includes assignments in the design office, the training room, various job sites and pipe fabrication shops.
He is the author of the book "Piping Engineering Leadership for Process Plant Projects" Gulf Professional Publishing, April, 2001, ISBN 0-88415-347-9 and the article "Process Design Team: Thinking outside the box" Hydrocarbon Processing, December 2003.
He is semi-retired and lives in Florida where he plays tennis and responds to piping questions when asked.


prognosis: Lead or Lag

 

[fegenbush]

A star for pennpiper. Although I often do not like being at meetings, I do see that they serve a purpose. We have, slowly but surely, been implementing training for new hires. So far it has yielded great results, and I expect that to continue into the future.

 

[zdas04]

Me too. I rarely read posts that long, but that one held my attention. I've never seen an EPC company go that far, but the best ones go in that direction. I've been called into two EPC companies to do some sort of training and both of those companies had a real training budget and both complained that finding germane training activities was difficult because so few companies in that industry bothered with training at all.

Producers are not a lot better. Most of the biggest ones have some sort of intern program where new hires spend 3 years in limbo. They have 2-4 job assignments in different locations, but the mentors have gotten little advice or training on what is expected of them (and the results are very spotty) and the training classes range from "what we did in 1980" to "how to use our e-mail system". Very little of it actually applies to the jobs the new hires will be asked to do. Smaller producers just wait until someone has been out of the intern program for a couple of years and then hire the recent interns away as experienced Engineers.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[Comcokid]

Some foundational items do not appear within a resume. You need to pull them out in the interview.
1) In High School they play in band or sing in Choir? Were they in a basketball, baseball, or football team? These people had to coordinate everything they did with others to make the whole group perform best.
2) Did they grow-up in a small mid-west town, or on a farm? They had a chance to tinker with everything, make broken stuff work again, and gain a sense of hard work and responsibility.
3) Is their hobby parachuting? Hang-gliding? Rock climbing? Might have extreme attention to detail and safety. Worked with a guy like this. When he finished something, it was right.
4) Did they compete in an individual sport - track (not relay races), biking, swimming (no relay races, etc. Knew a guy who competed in a solo sailing sport and almost went for the Olympics. Too self-centered and competed with everyone around him.

I once found that at an interview the manager was most interested in a final line on my resume that said "Amateur radio". He later said that to have an amateur radio license when I did (70's in high school) indicated I was hip-deep into electronics and I got the job.

 

[rotw]

star also here.

Of course this conversation could take place. When Bill makes reference to a company which is offering training program for new employees is to me the fictional part because it simply does not happen anymore. It is a result of stupid management, loss of core values, and maybe kind of disdain of people in general.

I experienced this myself throughout my career. Several years ago I have been part of a big company that provided me with a solid training (like several weeks in a row) right from the start when I join their group. You know what ? For sure I needed to learn the job by practice, but that training gave me a structure and a basis to tackle the problems that I faced later on and I did good job. So someone who is saying that a saving can be made on this is simply not accepting the reality which is that performance and solid execution is combination of practice AND foundational training which is meant to give you a methodology especially when employee just start as it will dictate the rest of the career path in the company. Just to say the least, you might be an experienced new hire but do you know company tools, procedures, organization charts, etc. Certainly not and as I said that is a kind of minimum expectation. One would expect training to go even beyond that.

Training also gives a signal to employee that company is investing in people and this signal is healthy ; it means company is not simply using people and exploiting them as a labor/workforce which is modulated according to management desiderata - which makes a slogan like "our main asset is our people" is higher that the acceptable threshold of bullshit.Yes of course you could simply consider people as labor/workforce but then good luck to ensure quality of execution, commitment and the team spirit which is essential to keep motivation.

Yes there is a risk that people move and leave the company and that investment is somehow lost, but hey that is part of profit & losses. Somehow in the labor market, companies also hire people who have been well trained elsewhere so they also take benefit from this from time to time and for free.

It is a great thing that such conversation have been posted and I think it should answer quite well to the original poster what to do next.

 

[Compositepro]

I used to think the same thing about hiring farm kids. But that goes back to the original question of this thread. Today the population of farm kids is almost zero. I moved my business from urban California to rural Tennessee. There are almost no working farms left and the percentage of the population that are farm kids is very small. Most kids spend their time playing computer games and are over-weight. Even here the opportunities and motivation for kids to learn hands-on skills are limited. Drugs are just as big a problem here as in urban areas.
Pennpiper's story was a very good analogy, in many different ways. The emphasis was on the importance of employer training. But I think the part most relevant to this discussion is the part about kids learning to play football at an early age. No football team is going to take someone who is 21 years old and has never before played football and train that person to make a winning team. I think it is arguable that it is more important to hire kids who had played all their lives than to merely provide training. Obviously, training is important, too.

 

[pennpiper]

I have no doubt that some or all of you are thinking:
"Where does the money come from for all this Training?"

Simple! Do as Robin Hood did. Cut all the Executive Bonuses by 10% or 20%, what ever it takes.

Bigger Executive bonuses do not make the working level employees better, increase performance or improve product quality.
Bigger Executive bonuses do hurt the working level employee’s moral while increasing the greed frenzy among all other Executives.


prognosis: Lead or Lag

 

[KernOily]

Great replies guys. I appreciate your input.

rotaryw - Not looking for sympathy brother. Looking for input. No offense taken. Strange that it came across to you that way; reminds me of the old adage 'it is impossible to write (or say) something in such a way as your message can't be misunderstood'. Ruck up and drive on.

 

[brandonbw]

The only memorable thing from college was that in our first engineering class we had to design a paper plane, draw up the plans and fly them in a competition. Something so basic like that is missing from the jobs that I have had. I would constantly ask one past employer if I could sit in on meetings or visit the job site while they spoke to the contractors. I was always turned down. I even said you don't have to pay me, can I just come along so I can learn more about what I am designing. They would just say go home and read a manual on my own time. That's how it was with something like CAD. Really complex projects they would just drop a new person in and say get to work. Yes the people who stuck around figured out who to ask and do things right. But a simple few hours of explaining something (training), anything would have helped instead of me spending days/weeks with people figuring it out.

It would be like telling someone go change my oil and handing them a torque wrench, sockets, jack and pan. It would save a ton of time to explain to that person what is going on and then will know how to change the oil on most cars properly.

I am 35 so I probably fall under the OP age category of lazys. My school was a research school and did not prepare me at all for real life work. The best prof's were teaching part time. The worst were lab rats.

If I was interviewing someone I would probably give them some legos and instructions and see how long it takes them to put that together. The better one I have seen is put someone in front of a project and ask them to do something. And see how they process what to do. I was offered a job after doing horrible on their test. But they said certain things I answered right most people didn't understand and rarely got right.

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer

http://bwengr.com

 

[moon161]

I got into old cars. As daily drivers. Mercedes 61x diesels, modified for using waste fryer oil as a secondary fuel. Something about not working sunday, has to work monday that gets you into a problem. Don't know how you can make anyone do this.

GE (20 years ago at least, my dad was talking to the trainer) used to train their new engineers and have them do a project together. One was a flag pole w/ self raising & furling flag. Other companies just throw their green people into actual projects w/ real money & customers on the line. GE used to also hire apprentices (like my granddad, who retired from GE)

 

[KernOily]

Thanks Moon161. Check out

http://www.mercedeslist.com/.

It's a mailing list for MB owners. Lots of 61x diesel guys on there and a few with veggie oil conversions. Several VERY experienced old tyme MB mechanics/shop owners on there. I had a W124 M104 gasser until just last year.

Your mention of new engineers being thrown together to work on a joint project is giving me some ideas...

 

[bigTomHanks]

I find it fairly easy to identify the hands on engineers in a properly conducted interview. If they are prior military they probably have a pretty good dose of common sense and if they talk in depth about hands on things, that also clues me in. I usually make it a priority to ask about hobbies at some point in the interview. Unfortunately I have seen time and time again my bosses hire the guys who talked a good game but possessed very few of the qualities that I mention above. I think this is because those type of engineers get into the profession and realize they aren't that interested in engineering and become the engineering managers. These same engineering managers hire more like themselves and the cycle repeats. I always make an extra effort to talk up the more practical ones in post interview reviews to help nudge them my way because at the end of the day I will be the one having to deal with them more often.

 

[desertfox]

Hi KernOily

I share the same feelings about the new crop of engineers, they can run a computer without much trouble and even produce 3D models and do stress analysis however ask them to properly dimension a 2D drawing, or do a hand calculation for the deflection of a beam and they are queuing to hang themselves in the corridor. The problem for these young engineers is that there are no proper apprenticeships here like there used to be, so they go to university for 4 years or more and never get to see any real manufacturing until after graduation.
My company now get the newbies to start off using 2D drawing packages so, that they have to think about drawing projection and to make them visualise what a component looks like from another point of view.
From a calculation point of view we ask them to do a hand calculation where possible so that they get a feeling for what they are trying analyse.
How we train them in my company is not perfect but at least now we are trying to get them not to rely solely on the computer software.

desertfox

 

[ewh]

...offering training program for new employees is to me the fictional part because it simply does not happen anymore.

I have to take exception to this... while it is a rarity, some companies do focus on extended employee training and development. Not just new hires but continual.

“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
-Dalai Lama XIV

 

[steellion]

I don't want to hijack this thread and make another thread about complaining about codes, but...
Common sense designs are being legislated out of existence by exceedingly complex codes. Formulae used to be simple enough that one could understand the gist of what was being calculated. Now we are forced to follow a "cookbook" mentality with equations so complex that it is almost impossible to decipher what is really being calculated.

Somehow, buildings were designed to be safe 50 years ago even without these PhD-level equations.

 

[1gibson]

Take their office chairs apart, have them put the chairs back together without giving them the instructions.

You lose points if you ask for the instructions before trying.
You gain points if you ask for the instructions after making a solid attempt.
You lose points if you haven't put it back together by the end of the day, yet still refuse to ask for instructions.

And obviously if it only takes you 5 minutes to put it back together, you're in good shape.