The Engineer's Path

Engineering calculations are a requirement for any structural engineering project looking to record the design assumptions and demonstrate the adequacy of the design. These documents are subjected to scrutiny and verification by third party before the design is approved.

Within the Oil and Gas industry of which I have been involved for over 20 years there has been a sea of change in the way we work, where we work and how we work. Everyone is familiar with the seismic changes in our environment; from the smoky, noisy halls of stand-up drawing boards to the silent cathedrals of cubicles and screen power. Major projects and companies now call upon designers to prepare budgets, schedules and manpower plans; the engineers are becoming figureheads, support staff required for final approval. The Oil and Gas industry uses workshare and provides the team with go-by example calculations of previous project. We close the door on them expecting high a degree of performance without interaction. These example calculations are presented as the baseline for the work; they are copied and expanded upon faithfully.

This article looks more closely at the structural engineer, within and without the workshare, and the calculations. I found more often than not that engineers do not challenge the example and do not seek to improve upon it. Change is frowned upon and engineers are not encouraged to go against the grain. The assigned scope of work will likely be modelled already and a concept is started which means the engineer also accepts the model at face value and proceeds to analyse it. It seems the engineers are being subordinated to a role of technologists.

The last fifteen years has seen a strait-jacket imposed on the way design office structural engineers work. The emergence of desktop computers ironically killed the structural engineer’s ability to interact with technology. We also saw the loss of many engineering graduates and professionals to the computer industries leaving large generation gaps within our numbers. We are a senior and aging profession missing the continuity of experienced and maturing engineers to maintain and nurture our numbers into the future. While no profession has been immune to the impact of the new technology, some have maximised the benefits more than others, for example the architects and electrical engineers have embraced the opportunities more positively.

Calculations produced by hand twenty years ago were concise and simplified; they identified and addressed the key elements of the design. Nowadays, calculations are not concise or simplified; they are detailed and address every component of the design without identifying the critical behaviour. Nowadays, the hardest part of the engineer’s job is to check calculations, requiring more and more time and resources. The activity of checking getting pushed all the way out to five minutes before the deadline and is not seen as an enjoyable chore.

What happened to us? Mainframe computers were designed, programmed and managed by engineers. We could put man on the moon, build and operate nuclear power stations and model complex seismic behaviours. The languages of FORTRAN, Basic and COBOL ruled the world. The engineers were kings and queens of technology. Desktop computer and Windows smashed that. The languages became complex and obscure like Pascal, C+, VB, Java and we saw the birth of the computer profession.

The drawing/design office saw the transformation of the draughtsman into designer and the rise of the modellers. The designers’ training multiplied and is still a substantial budget for companies to keep abreast of the latest technology. The engineers’ training remained static.

Globally, companies bought into the Windows network and provided MS Office to all employees. Training was not provided as it was determined to be intuitive and of low value to the business balance sheet. On the shop floor, we discovered the profit motivated drive of the Windows business and the endless recycling. MS Office is not geared for engineers but for businesses, payroll, marketing and sales; just look at the endless examples and references. The endless continual revision and upgrade of the MS office product and Windows operating systems also frustrated the engineers. The lack of consistency and uniformity has kept the engineer away from learning how to maximise the opportunities collectively. Even today, the majority of engineers do not know how to use MS Word or get the most from MS Excel. The only software applications having engineering-related components are the structural analysis packages and MathCAD and these have become the staple products for most engineers.

So what happened to the calculations? Structural analysis programmers saw the opportunity to bind the structural engineers to their products by taking care of the reporting features. Many of the big name software applications were developed before MS Windows so the reports are still DOS-based formats. Consequently, the reports show their ancient heritage of courier text, fixed lines, poor graphics and ASCII formats. Only in this direction did engineers embrace the new technology; to perform complex and over-detailed 3D analysis where 2D would suffice. The result of every member would then be printed out and presented as the calculation and the proof. Engineers got drawn into the quality of the analysis, not the quality of the calculation. Calculations have become quantitative tomes of work, failing to meet the primary and fundamental requirements of any structural calculations.

Calculations are required to provide:
III Summary of changes 1 page
II Post-calculation notes 1 page
I Material Take off summary 1 page

8 Scope of work 1 page
9 References 1 page
3 A reasonable basis for design 1 page
1 Design Concept 1 page
2 Sketch for the designer 1 page
4 Load assumptions 2 pages
5 Building the model x pages
6 Key results y page
7 Conclusion 1 page
10 Appendices z pages


QA/QC Checking would then occur after steps 2, 4 and 7.

The calculation cannot be changed after it is signed off as this is the baseline and the original document. Any changes are captured and measured as impact, by statements and percentages, on a page prefacing the original calculations.

To break the strait-jacket thinking, engineers need to look at the way they work:

• Brainstorm the details together
• Talk to each other
• Work together, not in isolation
• Break the work into smaller components
• Perform more frequent regular checks.
• Be visual in your work
• Identify, agree and focus on the key component of the design
• Avoid automatically performing 3D analysis
• Use analysis to verify the thinking.
• Leave the analysis towards the end of the design cycle
• Think about the reader
• Do not keep a history of superseded pages in the calculations
• Ensure the calculations are an active component of the design office cycle
• The calculations are a minimum basis for design, not the final.
• Go electronic

I will revisit each of these points in time.