Where IS Engineering Going? 12

[dozer]

Is it just me or is engineering (or those who pretend to be engineers) going downhill. Here are examples over the last year.

Hired a company to design and fabricate some components on a project (details left out to protect the guilty). They had one degreed engineer (but not licensed) who couldn't design his way out of a wet paper bag. We ended up doing much of the design work for them which defeated the whole purpose of us trying to unload some work.

Got anchor bolt reactions from a vendor that were low by a factor of two.

Requested reactions from an equipment skid manufacturer for earthquake loads and was told they really don't understand code requirements for earthquakes and we should figure it out ourselves. (How did they design the supporting structure on the skid if they didn't know seismic loads?)

Asked vendor to provide calcs to justify motor horsepower for a system that is supposed to move over 50 tons. Got an email from him with a one line calc that was wrong.

Another equipment manufacturer framed a T support into a wide flange in such a way that the only moment resistance at the base of the T was through torsion in the beam. You could push on the T with your hand and rock it back and forth. (No , it wasn't supposed to do that.)

These are just a few of the many things I've been seeing. I think one of the problems is vendors who either don't have engineers on staff or their engineers are so specialized they can't do the area that I'm looking out for which is structural.

I realize we're all human and we're going to make mistakes but it has got to the point where I just expect the information I'm getting from vendors to be wrong. Anybody else running up against this?

 

[HVACctrl]

Its all about the Benjamins, unfortunately.

Ed

http://www.engineerboards.com

 

[Dinosaur]

Lewtam,

You get a star from me! I'd give you five stars if the interface allowed.

When I examine the problem I conclude the problem lies in two factors: First, and engineer will slit another engineers throat (figuratively) for five bucks and the global market has exacerbated the whole problem. Second, mostly due to #1 and also due to politics, we have lost control of the decision making and are slaves to procurement and management/administration divisions in our organizations. The golden era of many engineering disciplines has come and gone. Now we are a comodity, or so the managers believe.

I have been fighting this battle since I was three years out of grad school. I work along side engineers that can't do s--t but get paid the same as me. When crunch time comes, the engineer managers came to me to get it finished in time. The engineering managers that thought the same way as me were marked men. They had gone as far as they were going to go in the organization. And they were treated the same way by their managers as I was treated. When a high profile complex project came up, the real engineer managers got the job. And they delivered. But others took the bow, got the handshakes, had the photo with the golden shovel, all that stuff. And these hard working guys (engineering managers) thought they would some day get that promotion they had worked so long to receive. But because they couldn't be trusted to keep their mouth shut about the quality of the work out there, they were ignored for more astute politicians.

I finally saw the light and changed disciplines. I now work closer to the operations side (used to work as a designer and then a design manager) where I can serve as a bridge between the production crowd and the engineer crowd. BTW, the operations guys were weary of me until they decided I wasn't some kind of Ivory Tower idiot.

What do we do about it? Nothing. Lean into the wind and just keep going. If you have the energy, mentor a new engineer now and then and take care of your family.

 

[bridgebuster]

It seems like there are two discussions going on: one about younger engineers and the other about the state of our industry. Here’s my two-cents:

Many of today’s younger engineers seem to be smarter but not very clever or resourceful. One of my professors’s stressed (pun intended) the need to determine the answer before developing the solution. The younger generation seems to have a difficulty with this. To them everything is build a computer model and perform hundreds analysis, never reaching any conclusion other than more study is needed. We need to emphasize the importance of being able to rationalize a solution to a problem.

Some seem to reinvent the wheel rather than – heaven forbid – copy what was done by someone else. Sometimes, “the way we’ve always did it before” is still the way to do it.

A lot don’t want to get to get their hands dirty – literally and figuratively. Some don’t want to leave the comfort of the office to go to a project site; they don’t realize the value of doing bridge inspection or construction inspection. Some want the jobs that are “nice and clean” – no surprises, no messy problems to deal with.

There’s too much equality in the engineering world; unlike the time when we did what we were told. Enough said about the younger generation.

As far as the industry, I began my career with a public agency and those who had more seniority had real engineering experience. Today, those people are mostly gone, replaced by professional bureaucrats without much real-world design experience. This is a real problem because many just don’t understand what’s on a set of plans and why.

We complain about fees but we’ve always been complaining about fees. Ideally, all clients should award work based on qualifications and negotiate fees rather than bid work. Unfortunately, as a former boss once said, “engineers are like prostitutes fighting over a customer.” How many firms are going to boycott the agency that bids work?

Also, we’re also to blame. I work for a large company and from the way things are run we’re more like an accounting firm that dabbles in engineering. The non-engineers (who run the company) are overly concerned with utilization and complain that we don’t care about budgets. We’re bombarded with weekly & monthly reporting requirements that have to be done on our own time but have to deal with a dysfunctional accounting system to complete them. Enough said; sorry to be so long winded.

 

[0707]

I give you a star for the frontality.

Most of the new comers from universities lived in a consumer society, they bought everything already built and without a computer it hard for them to think.

Most of the new engineers arrived has trainees. Now they are in the administration like yuppies assessing the administration rather in management than in engineering.

They really don’t realize the value of doing a turnaround field inspection or revamping construction. Some want the jobs that are “nice and clean” – no surprises, no messy problems to deal with.

During the messy problems when is hard to get solutions most of the times simple workers are the problem solvers.

Regards

Luis

 

[HgTX]

"Some don’t want to leave the comfort of the office to go to a project site; they don’t realize the value of doing bridge inspection or construction inspection."

Can't put that onto the new generation. I've run into many designers of various ages who would love to go out into the real world and see fabrication or construction but aren't allowed to by their employers. Time spent on site visits instead of design isn't considered billable, and there are deadlines to meet. During my brief stint in design, I told my boss I was heading out to the project site to see the structure I would be modifying, and he stopped me and made me come up with a formal justification (which was actually hard to do, because to me it was just so self-evident that I needed to go out there that I had trouble putting it into words).

Hg

Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376

 

[oldfieldguy]

HgTX, et. al.,

"Can't put that onto the new generation." You're darned staright there, buddy! I've worked on too many assemblies where it looked like they suspended an electric motor from the ceiling by a rope and then built the unit around it.

SOMEBODY designed it. And SOMEBODY ELSE approved it. And then it got built that way.

And then we get called to fix it, and I'm standing out there looking up at the God-awful location of that motor or gearbox or whatever and trying to figure out the way to get it replaced, and I have expended many prayers that the designer would be dragged out of his ivory tower and be forced to fix that which he designed...

old field guy

 

[dozer]

In my experience I would have to agree with HgTX. When I was a young pup I can't tell you how long it was before my employer let me go out to the field to see what I had designed. Between not wanting to pay the travel expense (we hardly ever designed local work) and not wanting to spare me from design for a couple of days they wouldn't do it.

Yet another example of management being penney wise and pound foolish.

 

[TomGDandT]

As a Dimensional Management Engineer, I invite the manufacturing people to review the early designs and tolerance specifications. I explain that this is their only chance to impact design intent. The design team hears and learns from manufacturing, what is can produced and what must be chaged to be produced.

When Design Intent fails in production, both the engineer and designer need to go to the plant. No body knows the design better. All it takes is a few fire fighting plant visits, and the design team understands why we have DFM & DFA. Design function and production requirement is a balancing act.

Tom Rhodes, GDTP-S
QMC LLC;

http://www.qmc.com

Senior Dimensional Management Engineer.
CeTOL 6 Sigma

 

[cw1info]

As an inexperienced engineer, this is my take;

In school from the early 90's, a P.E. was an aspiration point. I left the industry and came back in 2000. Now, the P.E. is just a person that passed the test after a cram course.

After visiting many association meetings and finding basic errors in P.E. stamped work, I wonder if a P.E. is worth the work. The general perception is a P.E. knows everything, even outside of their specialty.

Any inspiration?

In a different industry, they cut costs by hiring 2-year technical grads to do engineering grads work. As the instructor, it took 2x longer to try to teach the same subject and many did not get it. After 2-years of poor results, they went back to engineering grads. Maybe this example is similar engineering wide. Until the problem of incompetency hits the bottom line, nothing gets done.

 

[0707]

For big constructions and revamping projects almost of the times the design is done without de collaboration of experienced field engineers of the owner.

So what happens?

During the erection of the plant, construction and field engineers are faced with errors that could be avoided if they were taken into account during the project design phase.

To make a modification or to solve an error during the erection will be an extra work and the final cost of the project will increase proportionally to the number of extra works modifications, which would be irrelevant if included or discovered in the project phase.

 

[crystalmountain]

* Welcome to the incompetence world of engineering. Where Is Engineering Going? I think engineering has gone down to a pit and is heading deeper into it.

If you take a look at any medium- and large-size engineering company, whether it is a manufacturer or consulting firm, chances are you will see MBA’s, unqualified people, quasi-engineers and non-engineers with very little or “zero” engineering knowledge in the management, project director or group leader positions.

I was not referring to people who handle administrative duties in an engineering organization, I was referring to people who actually make engineering decisions and tell real engineers what to do but don’t even take the responsibility.

* Some state engineering boards in the U.S. want to license all Canadian engineers in the name of license mobility. In Canada, all engineering grads become professional engineers. It is equivalent to grant PE to all engineering grads in the U.S.

* Engineers are cheap and are getting cheaper. I wonder if this is the motive behind the scene for license mobility. Engineers need blame no others but themselves for the woes they are in as our board members are also engineers.

* If you haven’t got you PE yet, don’t hassle with the FE, PE and even the SE exams, apply through a Canadian board, get your P.Eng. in Canada and apply for reciprocity with the U.S. boards.

* It may be too late for you to change your profession, but if you have kids, you can advise them not to choose engineering for their careers. Anyone who has the intelligence to study engineering should be able to make out better in any other fields. And just in case they still want to be an engineer, they can always work as an engineering manager.

* Engineering profession, in my opinion, is a big joke!

 

[dcasto]

I see engineers coming out of school and being hired as engineers but they are not assigned enginnering work. Because other degrees are producing crap, the assign engineers to be business development, accounting, and middle management. Because they don't pracice engineering right out of scholl, by about 5 years they become worthless as engineers. We are draining the engineering pool because other disciplines can not produce good people.

 

[2dye4]

I say again my observation.
The current group and trend in engineering is producing people who do not have interest in the real understanding. They are fakers. I imagine in the old days (40 yr ago) that engineers had a certain pride about their ability to do thing and understand why. They kind of embraced the core knowledge of engineering as a key to success. This bunch today are fakers, they above all want to succeed in recognition, but don't want to be bothered with the hard work it takes, even after school, to understand the dynamics of how things work.
In short they discount experiences that reveal their ignorance hoping that it was just an unusual event and next time things won't be so complicated and they will do allright.
It is part of our society change from substance to appearance.

 

[kboy]

These problems are global ones, but how do we move forward? How do we attract the next generation into engineering, and not accounting or IT or simlair...
I think it is about pride, and wanting to do a good job, I have had recent graduates who have been great, and also pretty bad.
I think engineers are too quick to grab at analysis tools when in many cases a pencil and calculator would have been adequate.
Sure, we all know there is a place for FEA, Contact analysis, Adams for dynamics etc, etc, but it just disapoints me when I see engineers grabbing at FEA when a simple bending calculation would have done. Rather like taking a Ferrari to go to the food store.
I have a vision of Newton & Brunnel turning in their graves.
Maybe the best attribute of all is a large slice of common sense.

 

[dcasto]

Stop the misconception that all the engineeering needed in the world is complete and we have standards printed up that anyone with a high school education can use.

Engineering isn't the only profession, look at doctors, there is a whole group of "nurse practioners". What are they all about, the same as engineering techs. The only profession that doesn't have semi trained people running amok is lawyers, why? cuase they sue the pants off the fakers!!

My favorite in house story was when they promoted an accountant over engineering and plant operations. The new guy asked me why he needed a chemical engineer (for our chemical process plants) in the headquarters office because he had some civil, industrial, mechanical, and 2 year techs in the field. I asked him why he didn't go to a podiatrist when he had a heart attack.
Needless to say they placed an engineer back in that position within a year.

I'm open to suggestions, but globally we need to enforce local PE's running things.

 

[graybeach]

No matter what anyone says, there is no substitute for applying the right expertise, thinking things through and sweating the details. But these days, there is enormous pressure to turn engineering into a commodity that mindless drones can do. We Structurals are lucky though - ignore the details and HUGE KABLAM!
I love being an engineer and do not care a fig if management does not appreciate what I do. As an engineer, I feel only slightly underpaid. Its the lawyers and MBAs that are overpaid!
In a similar vein, the NY Times just had an article about doctors leaving their medical practices and joining investment banking firms as consultants, thereby pushing their salaries into the stratosphere.
What will happen to our world when no one can do anything practical anymore? It is going to be interesting!

 

[GMcD]

Crystal Mountain said:

"Some state engineering boards in the U.S. want to license all Canadian engineers in the name of license mobility. In Canada, all engineering grads become professional engineers. It is equivalent to grant PE to all engineering grads in the U.S."

I'm a Canadian P.Eng, and that statement is simply not true. It is true that all fourth year engineering students are given "EIT" status (Engineer In Training), but they can only get to be a P.Eng. IF they follow through with a minimum of 4 years work experience, PLUS write the Professional exams for the Province in which they are practicing. If I want to practice in another Province, I still have to write the exam on their Bylaws and Code of Ethics in order to do so.

But on the Topic at Hand: yes, I agree that the commodification of Engineering is a downhill spiral, and that technical expertise is respected less and less, and being substituted with spreadsheet management and the desire for "instant solutions" instead of good old engineering problem-solving. I keep telling my young designers and newbie P.Eng.'s- a Excel spreadsheets only allow you to make more precise mistakes. I keep telling them to work it out by hand to get a feel for what the numbers mean.

 

[EddyC]

The companies that are commoditizing their engineers are probably going to go out of business in the long run. But they'll be sure to destroy the reputation of the engineering profession as they go down, to the detriment of all of us.

 

[swivel63]

geez, reading this thread is depressing.

 

[EddyC]

swivel63,

Allow me to cheer you up with some positive examples:

a) The cousin of a close friend left his home country 7 years ago to study engineering in the USA (his home country had a university quota system that shut him out). He got his B.S Industrial Engineering degree and got picked up by a good firm. He worked there for a while and is now involved in a startup company that is working on smart materials.

b) A close buddy of example A also left his home country and came to the USA to study. He is currently pursuing his PHD in Biomedical Engineering and is doing research on new technologies & processes for advanced open heart surgery.

I am very envious of these 2 guys.