Busy Daze

Just putting the finishing touches to the second book so I can get it to the publishers next week. It takes about six weeks from that before the book is available to the public. The second book is closer to the engineer's heart, looking at spreadsheet designs, formats, layouts and planning for the future. I think more engineers will migrate to this topic first than how to use MS Word but it is part of the cycle.

Advice to young structural engineers

At one time, in the mid-nineties, my colleagues were leaving the engineering profession for jobs in computers and networks but I chose to stay in engineering through the lean times. I was tempted many times, as computers are my forte. I figured that ultimately engineering is a profession of wisdom; it gets easier and better paid with the years. Sadly, most of my colleagues became unemployed at the time of the dot.com bubble burst; so they were busted, struggling to learn new technology, new languages and all for less money. I stood alone in my generation between the seniors and the juniors.

Suddenly, more than ten years on, I have the grey hairs now and I teach the graduates and the trainees the ropes. My career has taken me worldwide into so many different but similar environments and it has been a great learning curve to see how different cultures respond to the needs of the graduates and the engineering profession at large. I find I enjoy my work; I work harder, I work better and I relax more. Most of all, I still look to see if 'the penny drops' and another engineer's lights get switched on. For most of us, it happens years beyond graduating. You ask yourself all the time, am I doing the right thing, is this what I want to do? Am I doing it yet? Is this it? For me, the answer is yes, yes and yes.

It is important learning the equations as a grad but it is a tiny slice of life as an engineer; you need vision, passion, confidence and still go out there and prove your competence to the client and yourself. In the early years, you need to stay to finish your professional registration where you can, use it as a rare time in your life that won't come again and observe actively. Possibly everything in your future will be tied to this period of your career. Or possibly not, but choose.
Go with your instincts, you have a whole life, an amazing career to enjoy, whether you stay with the herd or fly with the eagle. Each have their own path.

I had a heavy academic and sheltered life and chose to get as much site experience as possible to learn how the real world could use my ideas. My numerous years of site experience drive my office-based reality now. I wouldn't trade my experience now for anything! I got to blow up buildings, drive piles in six feet swells, reclaim land, see a danish refinery project from grassroots to completion, design new pipeline anchors in Khazakstan, innovate a new manhole design that will become the new standard. The list is endless. Now, I am fortunate, proud and grateful but it was not always easy. So my advice is be active, be alert, be assertive and advocate.

Active is to listen, look and learn. Alert is to to see opportunity to do something better. Assertive is to stick to your guns. Advocate is to know we have to change. It all takes time.

Us old boys

This was something I wrote a lttle while back :

When I came into the profession, I was taught by bluddy scots and tuff yorkshiremen on how to do calculations by hand, in the days of slide rules. It were 'ard (got to do the accents in your head).

But I learned a lot about the difference between clever and smart. Stuff grads learn today are clever but they are not smart. They come into the profession desperate for knowledge, experience and smartness. We have let them down badly. I spend a lot of my time with the Gen Y, find them enthusiastic, willing to listen, showing them examples, ( the good, the bad and the ugly) so they can judge the wisdom of the old boys. My generation were caught with dropped pants when desktop computers arrived for good and we haven't learned to pull them up since. Pre-windows computers (mainframe, basic and Fortran) was the age of engineering, we put man on the moon, built nuclear power stations, military specs and the banking industry was built on this... but when Bill Gates sold his stuff to a couple of secretaries, we fossilised and froze in the headlights of the future.

I have worked worldwide and am amazed at the global indifferences to the needs of the younger generation. All great work begins with a blank piece of paper and a couple of simple engineering rules,
- draw it out
- keep it simple
- Build the concept
- Identify the problem
- identify the principle action
- define your solution
then use the computer to verify your judgment.

Too many leap into the software, copy past examples (even if they are bad), work in isolation, don't ask questions and cannot justify what they are doing.I believe we need to think about how to agree a common platform for engineering design regardless of experience or generation. We need to define the minimum standard of calculations (then drawings) to ensure we maintain the wisdom of the past masters and pass on the tools of our craft to the innovators of the future.

We are strangling our profession with moans and depressing habits. I understand it but let's move on from the past, we are the seeds of the future.

It is a fantastic time to be in the profession, or at least it should be.

There now lad! I said my piece....puff puff....

A blast from the Past

Got to love this site:
http://www.hpmuseum.org/
You can see the old slide rules and some of the first calculators. I find it vey interesting how, as an avant-garde technology costing more than a couple of weeks wages, it was a source of competition and knowledge-sharing information between engineers. I remember the HP-65 calculators with the card strips. These two dutch guys I knew competed with each other for programming their various problems and they documented their plan their flowchars and everything they planned to do. I was impressed by their foresight and used it as I my benchmark for the future. Ths was in 1995!

MathCAD versus Excel

One of the interesting habits I've seen along the way through my career is the abnormal attachment some structural engineers have for MathCAD. I understand some of the reasons, it may be something learned at university and the interest kept alive. It might be that it adds value intrinsically to the experience, the engineers enjoys using it even though it is not appropriate. The software is loaded with engineering examples so it seems a natural extension of oneself as an engineer.

As an engineer, I have used MathCAD in pursuit of research; calculating free-convective heat transfer properties. I must admit I would never use it to calculate the theoretical wind load to be applied to a piperack in STAADDpro.

There's two kinds of engineers, the scientist and the plumber. A scientist engineer focuses on accuracy, details, formulae and precision between reality and calculations. A plumber engineer approximates, uses experience, is practical and reasonable.

I am the 'plumber' engineer. I do not need accuracy but sometimes I will revert to the scientist approach for the sticky bits. but I still prefer Excel over MathCAD any day. I can reduce fourteen pages of MatchCAD to one page in Excel. Checking MathCAD reports are dull and time-consuming and formulaic-driven. I see a term used in an equation and I cannot find its definition without flipping back through pages and searching......sigh....and I don't know what the value is, is it critical I will ask? The engineer shrugs.

Using MAthCAD someone calculates the wind load on a beam is 0.854 kN/m and 0.923 kN/m on a column; I might just apply 1 kN/m everywhere, is that wrong? We have onerous load factors as well because we are so uncertain! I have seen engineers spend a few days developing the little routines to calculate the wind load precisely....when it can be figured in two minutes. These stories abound and always will but I believe MathCAD is a poor choice as a power tool for plumber engineers.

In a culture that welcomes 3D and complex analyses, MathCAD can add to the pending confusion of the structural engineers role.

Excel is my recommendation, as a power tool for engineers. It is a pity that Microsoft did not work hard enough to make it 'plumber' friendly but I am working on it. With only 10 percent of Excel, it is incredible what can be achieved in producing engineering standard calculations.

The key is to understand the defaults, control the defaults, use visuals and show the numbers. If you can do that, many more engineers will be coming to your desk to to ask you about your Excel experience, your spreadsheets and your opinions.

where did Motagg come from?

The inspiration for doing the books, blogs and business came from the persistence of my wife, who believed I should take my ideas to the wider audience. I always hummed and hahhed and claimed I was too busy, I love my job and what I do. But then everybody else started saying it too.

My wife's surname is Agger so Motagg is the welding of Mote and Agger. No mystery hey?