How tolerant is your company of wrong answers? 2

[bellx1]

I'm about to move from a shielded intern environment to a position with more responsibility and I'm worried I'm gonna get things wrong.

Simple examples of this are messing up a callout on a drawing, or perhaps miscalculating some parameter. Being humans were going to mess up something time to time but I would like to avoid these situations.

I am meticulous and double check my work from time to time but double checking work takes a lot of time and I'm not sure if my employer will be mad that other engineers can turn out similar work in a shorter time.

Do engineers make these sort of mistakes often?

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[Qshake]

"often" - No. One of the reasons employers hire the best and brightest is that those graduates have a better understanding of the subject matter and will produce the correct answer (best suited answer in practice) more often than not. That, of course, is the definition of above average and it reduces risks for management.

That said, if you worry about it too much this work may not be for you.

Give it a try, follow what the older, more experienced engineers say and do and see how it goes.

Regards,
Qshake

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[ctopher]

Everyone makes mistakes.
What's normally not tolerable is making mistakes all the time and never asking questions, or taking notes.

Chris
SolidWorks 10 SP4.0
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SolidWorks Legion

 

[SomptingGuy]

Once you see a superior make a mistake, your in-built mental image of the hierarchy just evaporates.

- Steve

LinkedIn

 

[Ron]

Yes, you will make mistakes. As you noted, you're human. As Qshake noted, we are hired to be a bit above average and REDUCE (not eliminate) risk.

Most companies have systems in place to check and correct glaring errors and those that can get us into serious trouble. Even these systems do not always work though.

Do your best, try not to be distracted when working on critical details or when checking, and don't spend your time worrying about making a mistake.

Companies have to tolerate some level of mistakes. They are made top to bottom. If you work for a boss who tolerates no mistakes, move on.

You might also read up on "Standard of Care" for engineers. Understand it and its meaning to you in practice. It does not require perfection. It is based on reasonableness.

 

[IRstuff]

> Errors are inevitable, but you have to learn to balance the effort used in double and triple checking, vs. your overall throughput, as well as your "hit" rate for finding errors. In general, your personal efficiency in finding errors decreases as the number of attempts to find them increases. It might be more effective to have someone else check your design the 2nd time around.

> More importantly, you should own up immediately when errors are found, and immediately fix them, and figure out a strategy to minimize a recurrence. People, and management, are generally more tolerant of someone who is upfront with their mistakes compared to those that hide and obfuscate their errors. The latter engenders a lack of trust.

TTFN

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[zdas04]

A new engineer uses the same equations that an experienced engineer uses. The biggest difference is that with time you get a feeling for the expected magnitude of an answer. Last week I calculated a flow rate that "felt" a bit high. So I reduced it to a velocity and the velocity was nearly 100 Mach. Obviously a wrong answer. I went looking and found that I had converted from ft^3/sec to MCF/day (the conversion is 86400/1000=86.4) twice. I've been doing this stuff a really long time.

What I'm trying to say is that you don't need to punch all the numbers into your calculator two or three times, you just need to look at the answer and decide if it is a reasonable magnitude. If you don't have a feel for a particular parameter, then take it a step farther (e.g., convert a mass flow rate to velocity, a stress number to a fraction of SMYS, etc) and think about its reasonableness. If you find that a stress number is 10 times SMYS, then either you busted a calculation or you're going to bust a piece of steel.

David

 

[Dirtguy4587]

Error checking and "having a feel" for the answer are important. I also make it a habit of doing "peer review". I've always had a couple of colleagues that I can turn to, to do a double check of my design calcs and technical work. I use this especially when I get the gut feel of something amiss.

I'd agree with the above posts though - most supervisors will be accepting of mistakes, providing they are minimal, and not frequent, and that the person in error owns up to them as soon as they notice. Again, good companies will have checks and balances in place to catch mistakes before it costs big $'s.

 

[SNORGY]

If you want to see lots of engineering mistakes, just download an app for the iPAD called...well, I suppose it might not be ethical for me to mention its name (sigh). But, I spent $19.95 on an engineering app that - among other things - for a centrifugal pump with a 9" impeller turning at 3550 rpm, calculates a head delivered of just over thirty three million feet of liquid pumped. Now, I don't know about you, but when I need that kind of head I usually can't get it unless I put a couple of pumps in series or something.... Another error: Sine 45 degrees = 0.013. Another error: 300 kPa of water pressure = 100.4 metres of head (feet, maybe...). Another error: heat exchangers; LMTD cannot be calculated. Now, allegedly, this app was written by engineers for engineers, so it's scary to think that people might use it and trust it, when in fact it is about as useful as a random number generator.

Myself, I once almost issued a request for quotation for a boiler based on mechanical horsepower. D'OH!

So...relevance to this post...

Like others have said, develop a "feel" for what answers sound reasonable. After you have that feel, your errors will be reduced to pushing the wrong buttons on a calculator from time to time. So, push the buttons twice.

One final thought: the only mistakes that are really frowned on where I work are the ones you make twice (or more) because you didn't learn from the first one. Those are bad ones.

Regards,

SNORGY.

 

[MintJulep]

I have not seen a drawing from a vendor without an error in over 15 years.

You should try to do better.

 

[Ron]

MJ...ditto for shop drawings in construction (and the original design drawings!)

 

[bigTomHanks]

The world ran out of perfect people in 1843. If you aren't making mistakes then you are probably not working and your boss knows this because he/she has made mistakes before. Typically companies have several levels of review for the same job to avoid mistakes from getting outside the company walls. Don't worry about making mistakes because many great things came to fruition because somebody was not afraid to fail.

 

[moltenmetal]

That's what the intern position was supposed to do for you: to begin, in earnest, the life-long process of calibrating your commonsense.

As long as I don't have to get out the dead blow mallet to give your common sense a reset, I don't mind the odd mistake. Even a serious one, made once and truly and earnestly LEARNED FROM and never repeated is just fine.

Worried about what your boss thinks of your productivity and how much checking you're doing? Go talk to the boss- don't assume anything.

 

[SomptingGuy]

When I was a lot younger, my boss started some project that involved a 3D engine model that attempted to predict timing gear rattle. He was quite proud of it and then dumped it on me to continue the project. After a couple of days I had the pleasure of asking him why it was being run backwards.

- Steve

LinkedIn

 

[TheTick]

•Save your calculations.
•Learn to get a feel for the right amount of sweat in the details.
•Don't proclaim anything "final" until it has been checked by someone else.
•[!]NEVER LIE![/!]

Most companies I have worked for are tolerant of honest mistakes, so long as you show you have done due diligence.

Mistakes can be forgiven. A constant repeat of the same mistakes with a demonstrated failure to learn will ultimately not be forgiven.

 

[zdas04]

The most important item in that list, Tick is the one you highlighted, but if I had taken the first one to heart when I started in this profession I would have saved myself a lot of grief. It took 10 years of having to recreate calcualtions (or follow undocumented calculations) about 3 times a year before I got it. Now every calculation is in MathCAD with extensive notes as to where I got data and why I changed default assumptions. Saves my butt about once a month.

David

 

[KENAT]

Well, not sure anyone here has ever been fired or let go for making mistakes.

At least one guy got put to the front of the lay off list for finding others mistakes though.

Do the math!

Do what you can to check your own work, but even experienced folk that look their drawing over several times, perhaps weeks between reviews etc. and even after having had prototypes made from the drawing pack will miss stuff.

I know because a few weeks back a drawing I'd spent a lot of time on converting it from a machined part to cast part, incorporating casting house feedback, correcting the paint/finishing notes to reflect change in company ownership, gone through ECO... got brought back to me because the diameter on one hole was no where to be seen! (Vendor must have used CAD model to build to.)

Having a suitably qualified second set of eyes to look over stuff is invaluable.

Most of the drawings produced by other engineers around here are error filled crap, but I don't know of any that have really been disciplined about it.

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[MikeHalloran]

I mostly use Excel for calculations.

I sometimes go to the trouble of making them go full circle.
By which I mean, after the part where you get the result, keep going, working the problem backwards, just to see if it will duplicate the inputs.
When it doesn't, it's time to step through the problem a little at a time, again.






Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[casseopeia]

I had a boss (rest his soul) who used to say, "it's not a mistake until it can't be fixed."

"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump

 

[bellx1]

Thanks for all the responses guys.

I think the experience factor is going to be the hardest skill to develop.

I use Mathcad all the time now, it's makes both the documentation and presentation a cinch. I'm somewhat worried that I'll eventually end up missing a bug in the software but I suppose that's where hand calcs and double checks come in.

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