Was sent this link concerning The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam
As for Climate Change - I am an engineer and my brethren and I have been designing for climate change ever since that first engineer whacked off that saber-tooth tiger and made himself a coat. Next came the cave, and after that came homes with heating and air conditioning ...and raincoats. All designed to handle "Climate Change".
A side note - As an engineer I am appalled that an entire cadre of those that are trained in the solidness of math and science and the rejection of false prophets, have fallen for this hoax.
The only way I can explain it is that there is too much money in the promulgation of the hoax and that it represents a way for for the "Climate Normalcy Deniers" to redistribute wealth into their pockets at the expense of others. Thus it is that we have for example the American Society of Civil Engineers, despite the outcry of those of us willing to stand above the pack, issuing stupidly conceived and irrational letters of support for Climate Change initiatives .... initiatives that will result in creation of work projects for them. But hey who cares, in 1939 there was money to be made building boxcars. (For my younger readers that have been educated in the post 1980's modern school 1939 refers to the Nazi industrialists that build the boxcars for the transport of the Jews to the ovens.)
For more see my previous post here, here, and here.
Showing posts with label engineering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label engineering. Show all posts
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Just Say No - Continued (Letter to the Board)
February 10, 2009
Lance Kinney, P.E.
Deputy Executive Director
Texas Board of Professional Engineers
1917 IH35 South
Austin, Texas 78741
Subject: Proposed Changes to Board Rule
§137.63 Engineers’ Responsibility to the Profession
http://www.tbpe.state.tx.us/proposed.htm
Dear Mr. Kinney:
I am responding to your request for comments concerning the proposed changes to Board Rule
§137.63 Engineers’ Responsibility to the Profession.
Art Koenig, PE
#53218
President
MDI Labs, Inc
San Antonio, TX
Attachment (Proposed Board Rule)
Attachment #1
Proposed Board Rule
Omitted from this post - see orignal message this blog "Just Say No" or Click the link up above in the first part of this post .... or click here
http://www.tbpe.state.tx.us/proposed.htm
Lance Kinney, P.E.
Deputy Executive Director
Texas Board of Professional Engineers
1917 IH35 South
Austin, Texas 78741
Subject: Proposed Changes to Board Rule
§137.63 Engineers’ Responsibility to the Profession
http://www.tbpe.state.tx.us/proposed.htm
Dear Mr. Kinney:
I am responding to your request for comments concerning the proposed changes to Board Rule
§137.63 Engineers’ Responsibility to the Profession.
- I OPPOSE this proposed change
- I OPPOSE any later modification and re-submission to public comment of the proposed language to make it more palatable
- I OPPOSE revisiting this issue in attempts to, under different camouflage, introduce matters similar to those which have been proposed .
Comments -
#1 I note that nowhere in the Notice of Proposed Rule Change has there been given any explanation of the reasons or justifications for this proposed change. Surely, it did not just materialize out of thin air. Not to put too fine a point on things, it is improper for a public body, simply by edict, to propose a new rule to the public without a statement of rationale. There must be some reason(s) given so as to make the matter ripe for placement into public comment status in the first place. There is no indication in the preamble to the proposal that meets any scintilla of rationale as to why the change is warranted, so, therefore, I believe that the issuing of a proposed change to public comment is improper in its form and that it must be withdrawn on that basis alone.
#2 I note that in the preamble, it is said that there will be no costs, etc. First, I note that apparently there must be a requirement for the Board to indicate a cost assessment, and that is why such information was put into the preamble. This then implies that failure to do so would cause the issue of the proposed change to public comment to be defective and invalid. Because of this then, that very notice requirement itself is support for the point I have above with respect to a notice requirement for the "why" of this rules proposition. Second, the assertion that there are no costs is NOT correct. There are all sorts of costs, and, based on this, the submission of this proposed rule to public comment is again defective and the proposal must be withdrawn.
As far as costs that will accrue:
There will be costs to the State of Texas (paid for by the public) as the Board spends day after day playing referee on games that should better be left to the courts, or to the parties. Apparently the Board is sensitive to "costs" because it is proposing, in another proposed change to the Rules, to reduce the time it is required to spend, from a minimum of meeting twice a year to meeting "as required". This then means that meetings of the Board cost public money, and this then means that cost will be expended by the State for the Board to handle complaints brought under these new provisions. In association with this, it seems odd that the Board is attempting to write itself out of work requirements, yet at the same time setting up additional rules that will require engineers to spend their time and money defending against legal claims and Board complaints that will be easily brought about due to these proposed rule changes that are nothing more than open-ended invitations to engage in controversy.
Still concerning costs, I have had to pay others to do the work that I would have done had I not been discussing this matter with my colleagues, who, by the way, are uniformly OPPOSED to this proposed change.
Still concerning costs, I have had to spend money for my corporate attorney to review what essentially is a proposed law that the board wants to issue.
Still concerning costs, I have had to spend money now instructing my staff and attorney to be vigilant for attempts by the Board to recraft or resubmit this proposed change under different cover.
Again, implementation of this proposed rule will bring about horrendous costs as engineers are hauled into court for specious claims of "The engineer did not make it clear that X, Y, or Z".
Think about it - Are you married? If, so, how many times do you think you are being perfectly clear, but your spouse thinks, and can argue quite effectively, that it is otherwise?
This brings up a real life story that happened but 2 weeks ago. I was sitting at a coffee house and at the next table was a plaintiff's attorney that I knew. He was in conversation with a friend of his who was congratulating him on his recent win. The attorney indicated that it was a hard case, and he was happy to make the jury see things his way. He continued by saying ...
"You know, the reality in the courtroom in not the real reality. Reality in the court is whatever you can make the jury believe is reality. It is a play that I stage for an audience."~ Plaintiffs Attorney - Overheard having a conversation his friend
This then, direct from the mouth of one of the false-reality makers.
Now then, think of what this lawyer is saying. He is saying that when he sues an engineer in a contract dispute (and contract disputes invariably contain allegations of somebody not being clear), in addition to negligence being part of the pleadings, he will also bring a complaint to the Board, because there it is, plain as day and in writing no less, that the engineer by law is required to "communicate clearly".
Why bring the complaint to the Board? Two reasons - First, he does it to bring pressure (a.k.a. legal intimidation) to bear on the engineer to settle the case - partly out of the expense of now defending in two actions. Second, he is doing it so that when the non-Court-of-Law Engineers Board (that now, of its own making, has 15,0000 of these "The engineer was not clear" complaints on its docket), hears his presentation of "reality", they may be swayed with his rhetoric and pronouncement of things that he could not get away with in a courtroom. Having then this finding, he will then take it back to the court at law and file a summary judgment because of what is now a "rules violation" - which now in fact will be used to bolster an amended pleading of negligence per se. And, do not think that any attorney worth his or her salt will not be able to make their case to the Board. I have worked with enough of them to know that most of them, even the most poorly trained in public rhetoric, can by the end of the day, have people believing that you shot your own grandmother - when in fact your grandmother is sitting on the jury.
Essentially, the Board is attempting to legislate the Standard of Care, and attempting to legislate a Standard of Care for the Running of An Engineering Business. Both are improper. The concept of Standard of Care, which requires a plaintiff's burden of polling of the industry as to what the industry is doing at a place and time, is a protocol that is an encapsulating boundary for professionals. It is in place, in this form, for a reason , and any attempt to provide "rules" for "client relations" is a step onto the slippery slope from which there is no recovery, because next you will have to propose a rule that we MUST set up a client communication blog, or that we MUST use electronic data capture in the geotechnical laboratory because that eliminates transcription and calculation error and thereby protects the health safety and welfare of the public. Following this then, we may thus at some short time in the future be faced with a rules violation if our firms do not have a certain percentage of electric cars in our fleet., of if we do not all fall in line with the teachings of the politically correct re-education brown-shirt committees concerning global warming, now debunked, and called "climate change'.
A good way to view the bigger picture as to the inappropriateness of this proposed rule change is to consider that in NOWHERE in the engineering examinations required by the Board are there questions about the proper format for communication with the client, or questions about clear letter writing. Indeed, as a candidate for registration as an engineer, the Board will absolutely NOT let me get away with statements on my SER that "I wrote good letters", or "I always kept the client informed", or that "My writing was always clear".
NO - in order to get registered, the Board requires that I tell them:
"I calculated",
"I performed the strength calculations."
"I performed the aquifer drawdown analysis using the USGS Standard protocol 8765" or,
" I kept bridges standing by determining the design loads of the bridge, sizing the beams and stringers by calculating the shear and moments created during ice storms as well as normal loading conditions, and executing the gusset plate calculations according to the AISC."
Art Koenig, PE
#53218
President
MDI Labs, Inc
San Antonio, TX
Attachment (Proposed Board Rule)
Attachment #1
Proposed Board Rule
Omitted from this post - see orignal message this blog "Just Say No" or Click the link up above in the first part of this post .... or click here
http://www.tbpe.state.tx.us/proposed.htm
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Makes Me Want to Vomit
A while back I opened up my March 2008 issue of the ASCE Civil Engineering Magazine and found, side-by-side, 2 letters to the editor that but give me one more reason to hang my head in shame at what my profession has become, and is on the road to further becoming.
The first letter "Gusset Plates Should Have Been Caught", concerns the failure of the IH 35 Bridge in Minnesota. The 2d, "Changes to Education Not Necessary" deals with but another of those self serving and ever present calls for "change" from those entrenched in the politico-economic-engineering education bureaucracy. These 2 letters, taken together are but bright torches that illuminate the state of affairs.
Turning to the education letter first, but keeping in mind that I have just read the gusset plates letter, and, without my joining on the issue of whether the gusset plates should have been "caught", or whether or not this now means that we will redesign and inspect each and every bridge in the US, or that we will now daily inspect all gussets, each nut and bolt, each washer, each coat of paint, etc. ad nauseam; and not admonishing the reader that structures do not fail because they were not designed to code (that being a legal fiction), I note that Berti , in reaction to the Galloway Article "Proposal for Engineering Education Reform" that was printed in the November 2008 ASCE Civil Engineering Magazine, points out that the Galloway "proposal"
"...says that they [engineers] must be trained in public policy, ethics, leadership, communication, and management in order to flourish in our global economy; be able to work on multi-cultural teams; and understand social sciences, business, economics, and cross cultural dynamics, including foreign language and cultural studies."
To his immense credit, Berti takes issue with such proposals.
While I, too, take issue with such politically correct reformulation of our engineering education, I pause to point out that perhaps here then (in the Galloway proposal we find the very reason(s) why people died on Interstate 35, and the reason why more will die elsewhere as the pernicious introduction and cancerous propagation of green and social "save the world, change we can believe in, hope for the future, etc" infects and takes over the profession via its initiates being churned out with "green" and other politically correct stamps of approval from our nation's engineering schools, for nowhere in the cited Galloway paragraph of proposed "reforms" is there any mention of how to design gusset plates!!!!
But, that should not really matter, for if those gusset plates were mis-designed, but mis-designed using a Galloway "green" pencil, constructed of materials that were certified as not having any lead (gotta save the environment), or certified as being material from the rain forest (jungle) so as to help indigenous natives realize their potential (which they have had 2,000 years to realize already), all of course, without any harm to any of the animals in the wetlands (swamp), using only energy from a solar panel (pipe dream), without offending anyone (diversity), by an engineer that spoke 12 languages so he could be certified as "sensitive" (multi cultural), and that thought that no one culture was superior to any other (diversity again), that was given a special waiver to get into engineering school (discrimination and unequal opportunity), that thought that heating homes with electric power is in no way superior to heating them with buffalo chips, and constructed from plans that were printed in Spanish, English, Scottish Brogue, and all the other languages of the world so as to not offend anybody and so we can truly call ourselves oh-so-sensitive globalists, then such mis-design should not matter because it was all so politically correct, and those that stand and shed tears over the graves of their loved ones as they lament their deaths on, or under, that bridge, will drop tears, not only for them, but also unknowingly drop tears for what used to be a noble profession turned now into a dead carcass filled with political correctness and finger-painting, brought about by a corruption of thought as to what engineers are supposed to be and what they are supposed to do (design stuff so that in a population of structure types the probability of people getting killed is theoretically less than if that same population of structures was designed by a non-engineer) ... and what they are supposed to NOT do (engage in PC re-education initiatives that detracts from what they are supposed to do). [Yes, to educated engineers, that sentence does make sense. Parse it, you will have fun.]
I suppose that this article may bring some heat and ire from self-anointed, especially from the engineers and the overweening engineering organizations that are making money out of the corruption of the profession (follow the money if you want to understand the "green" movement), but the continuing state of decline has brought me to the breaking point, and perhaps this article will let those of like mind know that they are not alone and give them common cause to stand up to the craziness that has infected the field.
By the way, perhaps if a contractor had not loaded up the lanes of the bridge with supplies and equipment, then perhaps that bridge would not be in the water today, but then again, if there was overloading, perhaps it was not caught, or proscribed in the remediation plans and specs, because the engineers doing the remediation design came out of an engineering program that displaced some of its courses in gusset plate design, construction failures, structural analysis and redundancy design, with courses on cultural sensitivity and sustainability, global warming, diversity, etc., and because its students, instead of taking additional courses in corrosion chemistry, alkali aggregate reaction, engineering inspection of steel structures, or laboratory testing of rock and soils, spent their time traveling to a far away land so that they could get a "feel good credit" for building water wells in countries that in 5000 years have not learned themselves how to create a social and political structure that will result in them being able to build it for themselves.
So, the next time you or one of your family are being killed by a bridge falling down, or a space shuttle exploding, or a tunnel in Boston dropping some panels on you, ask yourself if it would not have been better to have your projects designed by a real engineer who's mind has been conditioned by rigorous technical training, as opposed to being designed by one of today's culturally and diversity sensitive girly-men.
And they wonder why enrollment at engineering schools is falling. It ain't rocket science.
The first letter "Gusset Plates Should Have Been Caught", concerns the failure of the IH 35 Bridge in Minnesota. The 2d, "Changes to Education Not Necessary" deals with but another of those self serving and ever present calls for "change" from those entrenched in the politico-economic-engineering education bureaucracy. These 2 letters, taken together are but bright torches that illuminate the state of affairs.
Turning to the education letter first, but keeping in mind that I have just read the gusset plates letter, and, without my joining on the issue of whether the gusset plates should have been "caught", or whether or not this now means that we will redesign and inspect each and every bridge in the US, or that we will now daily inspect all gussets, each nut and bolt, each washer, each coat of paint, etc. ad nauseam; and not admonishing the reader that structures do not fail because they were not designed to code (that being a legal fiction), I note that Berti , in reaction to the Galloway Article "Proposal for Engineering Education Reform" that was printed in the November 2008 ASCE Civil Engineering Magazine, points out that the Galloway "proposal"
"...says that they [engineers] must be trained in public policy, ethics, leadership, communication, and management in order to flourish in our global economy; be able to work on multi-cultural teams; and understand social sciences, business, economics, and cross cultural dynamics, including foreign language and cultural studies."
To his immense credit, Berti takes issue with such proposals.
While I, too, take issue with such politically correct reformulation of our engineering education, I pause to point out that perhaps here then (in the Galloway proposal we find the very reason(s) why people died on Interstate 35, and the reason why more will die elsewhere as the pernicious introduction and cancerous propagation of green and social "save the world, change we can believe in, hope for the future, etc" infects and takes over the profession via its initiates being churned out with "green" and other politically correct stamps of approval from our nation's engineering schools, for nowhere in the cited Galloway paragraph of proposed "reforms" is there any mention of how to design gusset plates!!!!
But, that should not really matter, for if those gusset plates were mis-designed, but mis-designed using a Galloway "green" pencil, constructed of materials that were certified as not having any lead (gotta save the environment), or certified as being material from the rain forest (jungle) so as to help indigenous natives realize their potential (which they have had 2,000 years to realize already), all of course, without any harm to any of the animals in the wetlands (swamp), using only energy from a solar panel (pipe dream), without offending anyone (diversity), by an engineer that spoke 12 languages so he could be certified as "sensitive" (multi cultural), and that thought that no one culture was superior to any other (diversity again), that was given a special waiver to get into engineering school (discrimination and unequal opportunity), that thought that heating homes with electric power is in no way superior to heating them with buffalo chips, and constructed from plans that were printed in Spanish, English, Scottish Brogue, and all the other languages of the world so as to not offend anybody and so we can truly call ourselves oh-so-sensitive globalists, then such mis-design should not matter because it was all so politically correct, and those that stand and shed tears over the graves of their loved ones as they lament their deaths on, or under, that bridge, will drop tears, not only for them, but also unknowingly drop tears for what used to be a noble profession turned now into a dead carcass filled with political correctness and finger-painting, brought about by a corruption of thought as to what engineers are supposed to be and what they are supposed to do (design stuff so that in a population of structure types the probability of people getting killed is theoretically less than if that same population of structures was designed by a non-engineer) ... and what they are supposed to NOT do (engage in PC re-education initiatives that detracts from what they are supposed to do). [Yes, to educated engineers, that sentence does make sense. Parse it, you will have fun.]
I suppose that this article may bring some heat and ire from self-anointed, especially from the engineers and the overweening engineering organizations that are making money out of the corruption of the profession (follow the money if you want to understand the "green" movement), but the continuing state of decline has brought me to the breaking point, and perhaps this article will let those of like mind know that they are not alone and give them common cause to stand up to the craziness that has infected the field.
By the way, perhaps if a contractor had not loaded up the lanes of the bridge with supplies and equipment, then perhaps that bridge would not be in the water today, but then again, if there was overloading, perhaps it was not caught, or proscribed in the remediation plans and specs, because the engineers doing the remediation design came out of an engineering program that displaced some of its courses in gusset plate design, construction failures, structural analysis and redundancy design, with courses on cultural sensitivity and sustainability, global warming, diversity, etc., and because its students, instead of taking additional courses in corrosion chemistry, alkali aggregate reaction, engineering inspection of steel structures, or laboratory testing of rock and soils, spent their time traveling to a far away land so that they could get a "feel good credit" for building water wells in countries that in 5000 years have not learned themselves how to create a social and political structure that will result in them being able to build it for themselves.
So, the next time you or one of your family are being killed by a bridge falling down, or a space shuttle exploding, or a tunnel in Boston dropping some panels on you, ask yourself if it would not have been better to have your projects designed by a real engineer who's mind has been conditioned by rigorous technical training, as opposed to being designed by one of today's culturally and diversity sensitive girly-men.
And they wonder why enrollment at engineering schools is falling. It ain't rocket science.
Friday, January 30, 2009
A Profession or a Commodity?
"God grant me the serenityto accept the things I cannot change;courage to change the things I can;and wisdom to know the difference. "
From time to time I attend the annual meeting of a well respected engineering business leaders association. The purpose of these meetings is to allow the attendees, mostly owners and senior management of geotechnical engineering firms, to let their hair down and talk about things that otherwise they would have no outlet for. As part of these get togethers, speakers are invited to give presentations on all sorts of topics ranging from engineering liability control, to employment practices, to proper contract formation, to lessons learned the hard way, etc.
At a recent meeting, one of the sessions was titled something along the lines of "How to be treated as Professionals". The speaker, Dr Susan Harris, an A/E services business consultant primed the audience with some preliminary remarks about the word professionalism and after these preliminaries, she asked the audience by show of hands to indicate how many of them considered themselves trusted advisors to their clients. About 90% of the 400-strong audience raised their hands.
As I recall things, she then asked some of the group to explain why they felt that way. Their answers ranged from, "I work on big projects for big clients.", to "Well, we have lunch every so often and they give us a lot of their work".
After this group had their say, the speaker then mentioned that at the icebreaker the previous evening, she had heard comments from many of the attendees expressing frustration with the fact that the image of their profession was tarnished; frustration with the fact that engineering fees were so low, and frustration and angst over how they always felt that they were not providing professional services for a professional fee ( a contradiction to the earlier stated opinion that they were trusted advisors to their clients), but rather providing services for a fee that always seemed to be pressured/set by what "the other guy" was charging.
The response that rippled through the group was a sea-wave of head nodding accompanied by murmurs of muted agreement - all, of course, coming from many of the same company owners and managers that themselves had all played the "Let's try and think about what the other guy will probably charge, or how the other guy will scope the work, and then, to get the work, let's charge a little less, or not too much more" game.
By this time I was anticipating that this was going to be another one of those "Death to the Bottom Feeders", "Don't be a Bottom Feeder", or "What it means to be a professional, and now that you know it, go out communicate that to your client" kind of talks.
I was also anticipating that I was about to hear another a pep-talk meant to convince us that the answer to our image and fee problems was to convince the clients that "we were professionals, by god", and that thereby convinced, they would allow us to charge more, and would forevermore treat us with the respect that was our due.
As I sat back, I was thus resigned to hearing, for the umpteenth time, talking points along the lines of:
Wanting to put my 2 cents of inoculation in before all the politically correct "look at how important we are and let's get the clients to see us that way" blah- blah started, I raised my hand to give my take on things. My recollection is that my comment started out along the lines as follows:
"I am sorry to break it to the group, but regardless of whether we think of ourselves as trusted advisors, our clients do not think of us that way or even as valued members of their team. To most of the clients, engineers are nothing more than commodities and products to be purchased just like bulldozers or jackhammers. The majority of clients do not consider the professionalism, or the time, or the training, or the judgment of the engineer. In the client's mind, an engineer is an engineer, is an engineer. All engineers are licensed by the state, all engineers go to engineering schools, all engineers can be engaged in proposal bid wars, and, deep down, clients have the attitude that "I can always find another engineer - just like I can find another plumber."
The thrust of my little firebomb was that, contrary to popular belief, engineers and engineering services ARE commodities, just like bread, or pork bellies, or oil futures, or plumbing or termite services. (Gasp)
After mulling over all the audience participation for a few seconds, the speaker then continued the presentation with something along the lines of "Well, folks lets talk about business markets in general and, in particular, let's talk about the engineering businesses." What transpired over the next 45 minutes was an outline of the life cycle of products and businesses, including discussion of things as Christensen's S-Curve, Moore's Early Adopters, Pragmatists, Late Adopters, and Laggards, Maslow's need hierarchy, and ideas such as fulfillment of need via a physical object vs. fulfillment of need via an experience object. In sum, and without any payoff from me beforehand, the main thrust of her talk was this:
The engineering field that most of us work in is a mature business and has reached the flat line or plateau portion of its business life. As such, most of the work that most of us in the room do is commoditized and, for the most part, engineering itself is a commodity. So, if you do not want to be a commodity you best find something else to do.
(Double Gasp from the 400!) She went on to explain that the commoditized phase of a business or industry life cycle is normal, and occurs when the capabilities of the business generally exceed the expectations of most of the existing customer base. She further explained that this is in contrast to the early stages of a business segment where the needs and expectations of the majority of clients exceed the ability of the industry to provide them. Thus, in the past (think 1840 -1960), because of the expansion and industrialization of America, there were bridges needing to be built, when nobody knew how to build bridges and when every river needed to be crossed; there were structures needing to be built in unstable soils when there was no knowledge of soils engineering other than "keep digging till it quits caving in" (think Panama Canal), there was widespread disease and pestilence caused by pathogens in the drinking water when there were very few sanitary engineers that understood the problem or the solution (think cholera New York 1832). In short, during these times the expectations/needs of the market generally exceeded the ability of the engineering and contracting community, i.e., the pain was great, the societal and economic payoff enormous, and the scarcity of solutions astounding. This then lead to a focus on meeting these societal demands and resulted in engineering breakthroughs that were known and understood (think Terzaghi, Peck, etc.) by only a select few and were initially highly prized.
Thus it was that in those days, metaphorically speaking, engineers were indeed as gods ... only they were called professionals. And as professionals, their playground was society's pain, and an important concept is that their stature (a.k.a. respect) came from taking away that pain in a dramatic way. Need a bridge over the Mississippi so we can transport our $15,000,000/day of corn to market , call that guy Eads, or Roebling - they are about the only ones that know how to do it; need some atomic material, call that gal Curie because she is the only one that knows how to get it; need some canals or railways in England so as to get the coal to the industries down in London, call that guy Spencer because he is about the only one that knows what it really takes, and. fellow investors, if we can get a canal or railroad built we investors can make $12,000,000 pounds a month.
In short, engineers were NOT a dime a dozen, because there were not a dozen of them around. (As to whether they have ever gotten more than a dime for their contribution, that is for another article.) Simply put then, in the early days we had a scarcity of competent engineers, and an excess of economic benefit that was being held in "lock-up". This then was a great combination leading to engineers being held in high(er) esteem, so much so that by 1860, it was the engineers that were as gods, while at the same time doctors were considered quacks and charlatans.
This scarcity of engineering talent however was short lived however, because the overwhelming economic benefit to be gained by the application of these breakthroughs created extreme pressure for engineering to be propagated. Under this pressure, the propagation did indeed happen and was done by the various technical societies (ASCE was formed in 1852), and by creation of university engineering and technical programs (USMA 1802, RPI 1824, Harvard 1846, Yale 1847, Washington University in St Louis School of Engineering 1857). It was also done by industry sponsorship as they realized more engineers meant first-mover profits for them. (Gee, imagine that.)
So, if engineers used to be held in high esteem and used to be considered as gods, where have the gods gone? The answer is that they are still here, but they are now just mere mortals commuting to work with the masses, doing their work just as the masses do, and, sorry to break the bad news to all my brethren out there, are themselves indistinguishable from the masses.
Thus it is that much of the engineering that is done today by millions of engineers - engineering that only a few in the world knew how to do when it was first needed - is now but mundane drone work, done by graduate engineers who do not yet have, nor need, an engineering seal to be able to do what they do. LaPlace Transforms, 2d year Calculus; Moment Distribution Method - 2d year Structures; Atomic Reactor Physics - 3d year Physics; Settlement Analysis -1st year Soils; Phase Equilibrium of Soils Water - 3d year Soils; Finite Element Analysis or slope stability - presently done by an entry level engineer who pushes "Run" on the computer keyboard.
What happened that took the engineer from his exalted position to that of a mere mortal having lowly status? Was it because engineers failed to continually communicate to society how important they were? No - that was not it. The reason for the fall is because the reality of things is that after any discovery of any economic importance, economics demands propagation and application; propagation and application requires standardization and codification; and standardization and codification lead to the final resting place of all products, services, and technologies - commoditization. Thus it is that the same engineering that used to be dispensed from a godlike pedestal, is now a commodity - a commonplace.
So, where does this leave today's engineer and how should he be thinking about things so that his thinking is aligned with reality - and so he does not quit his job and become a software developer for http://www.pimpmylab.com/, or a shoe salesman? Well, that is the subject of a future missive.
To be continued ........ if I am not run out of town on a rail beforehand.
From time to time I attend the annual meeting of a well respected engineering business leaders association. The purpose of these meetings is to allow the attendees, mostly owners and senior management of geotechnical engineering firms, to let their hair down and talk about things that otherwise they would have no outlet for. As part of these get togethers, speakers are invited to give presentations on all sorts of topics ranging from engineering liability control, to employment practices, to proper contract formation, to lessons learned the hard way, etc.
At a recent meeting, one of the sessions was titled something along the lines of "How to be treated as Professionals". The speaker, Dr Susan Harris, an A/E services business consultant primed the audience with some preliminary remarks about the word professionalism and after these preliminaries, she asked the audience by show of hands to indicate how many of them considered themselves trusted advisors to their clients. About 90% of the 400-strong audience raised their hands.
As I recall things, she then asked some of the group to explain why they felt that way. Their answers ranged from, "I work on big projects for big clients.", to "Well, we have lunch every so often and they give us a lot of their work".
After this group had their say, the speaker then mentioned that at the icebreaker the previous evening, she had heard comments from many of the attendees expressing frustration with the fact that the image of their profession was tarnished; frustration with the fact that engineering fees were so low, and frustration and angst over how they always felt that they were not providing professional services for a professional fee ( a contradiction to the earlier stated opinion that they were trusted advisors to their clients), but rather providing services for a fee that always seemed to be pressured/set by what "the other guy" was charging.
The response that rippled through the group was a sea-wave of head nodding accompanied by murmurs of muted agreement - all, of course, coming from many of the same company owners and managers that themselves had all played the "Let's try and think about what the other guy will probably charge, or how the other guy will scope the work, and then, to get the work, let's charge a little less, or not too much more" game.
By this time I was anticipating that this was going to be another one of those "Death to the Bottom Feeders", "Don't be a Bottom Feeder", or "What it means to be a professional, and now that you know it, go out communicate that to your client" kind of talks.
I was also anticipating that I was about to hear another a pep-talk meant to convince us that the answer to our image and fee problems was to convince the clients that "we were professionals, by god", and that thereby convinced, they would allow us to charge more, and would forevermore treat us with the respect that was our due.
As I sat back, I was thus resigned to hearing, for the umpteenth time, talking points along the lines of:
- how much study it takes to be an engineer
- how we protect the health safety and welfare of the public
- how we have all kinds of overhead expense
- how we provide our folks with good pay, vacation and sick leave
- how we do charity work, and how our bottom feeder competition does not do any of this stuff, and therefore of course they can charge less, but that in charging less by paying less, they attract less qualified people to work for them, yadda-yadda.
Wanting to put my 2 cents of inoculation in before all the politically correct "look at how important we are and let's get the clients to see us that way" blah- blah started, I raised my hand to give my take on things. My recollection is that my comment started out along the lines as follows:
"I am sorry to break it to the group, but regardless of whether we think of ourselves as trusted advisors, our clients do not think of us that way or even as valued members of their team. To most of the clients, engineers are nothing more than commodities and products to be purchased just like bulldozers or jackhammers. The majority of clients do not consider the professionalism, or the time, or the training, or the judgment of the engineer. In the client's mind, an engineer is an engineer, is an engineer. All engineers are licensed by the state, all engineers go to engineering schools, all engineers can be engaged in proposal bid wars, and, deep down, clients have the attitude that "I can always find another engineer - just like I can find another plumber."
The thrust of my little firebomb was that, contrary to popular belief, engineers and engineering services ARE commodities, just like bread, or pork bellies, or oil futures, or plumbing or termite services. (Gasp)
After mulling over all the audience participation for a few seconds, the speaker then continued the presentation with something along the lines of "Well, folks lets talk about business markets in general and, in particular, let's talk about the engineering businesses." What transpired over the next 45 minutes was an outline of the life cycle of products and businesses, including discussion of things as Christensen's S-Curve, Moore's Early Adopters, Pragmatists, Late Adopters, and Laggards, Maslow's need hierarchy, and ideas such as fulfillment of need via a physical object vs. fulfillment of need via an experience object. In sum, and without any payoff from me beforehand, the main thrust of her talk was this:
The engineering field that most of us work in is a mature business and has reached the flat line or plateau portion of its business life. As such, most of the work that most of us in the room do is commoditized and, for the most part, engineering itself is a commodity. So, if you do not want to be a commodity you best find something else to do.
(Double Gasp from the 400!) She went on to explain that the commoditized phase of a business or industry life cycle is normal, and occurs when the capabilities of the business generally exceed the expectations of most of the existing customer base. She further explained that this is in contrast to the early stages of a business segment where the needs and expectations of the majority of clients exceed the ability of the industry to provide them. Thus, in the past (think 1840 -1960), because of the expansion and industrialization of America, there were bridges needing to be built, when nobody knew how to build bridges and when every river needed to be crossed; there were structures needing to be built in unstable soils when there was no knowledge of soils engineering other than "keep digging till it quits caving in" (think Panama Canal), there was widespread disease and pestilence caused by pathogens in the drinking water when there were very few sanitary engineers that understood the problem or the solution (think cholera New York 1832). In short, during these times the expectations/needs of the market generally exceeded the ability of the engineering and contracting community, i.e., the pain was great, the societal and economic payoff enormous, and the scarcity of solutions astounding. This then lead to a focus on meeting these societal demands and resulted in engineering breakthroughs that were known and understood (think Terzaghi, Peck, etc.) by only a select few and were initially highly prized.
Thus it was that in those days, metaphorically speaking, engineers were indeed as gods ... only they were called professionals. And as professionals, their playground was society's pain, and an important concept is that their stature (a.k.a. respect) came from taking away that pain in a dramatic way. Need a bridge over the Mississippi so we can transport our $15,000,000/day of corn to market , call that guy Eads, or Roebling - they are about the only ones that know how to do it; need some atomic material, call that gal Curie because she is the only one that knows how to get it; need some canals or railways in England so as to get the coal to the industries down in London, call that guy Spencer because he is about the only one that knows what it really takes, and. fellow investors, if we can get a canal or railroad built we investors can make $12,000,000 pounds a month.
In short, engineers were NOT a dime a dozen, because there were not a dozen of them around. (As to whether they have ever gotten more than a dime for their contribution, that is for another article.) Simply put then, in the early days we had a scarcity of competent engineers, and an excess of economic benefit that was being held in "lock-up". This then was a great combination leading to engineers being held in high(er) esteem, so much so that by 1860, it was the engineers that were as gods, while at the same time doctors were considered quacks and charlatans.
This scarcity of engineering talent however was short lived however, because the overwhelming economic benefit to be gained by the application of these breakthroughs created extreme pressure for engineering to be propagated. Under this pressure, the propagation did indeed happen and was done by the various technical societies (ASCE was formed in 1852), and by creation of university engineering and technical programs (USMA 1802, RPI 1824, Harvard 1846, Yale 1847, Washington University in St Louis School of Engineering 1857). It was also done by industry sponsorship as they realized more engineers meant first-mover profits for them. (Gee, imagine that.)
So, if engineers used to be held in high esteem and used to be considered as gods, where have the gods gone? The answer is that they are still here, but they are now just mere mortals commuting to work with the masses, doing their work just as the masses do, and, sorry to break the bad news to all my brethren out there, are themselves indistinguishable from the masses.
Thus it is that much of the engineering that is done today by millions of engineers - engineering that only a few in the world knew how to do when it was first needed - is now but mundane drone work, done by graduate engineers who do not yet have, nor need, an engineering seal to be able to do what they do. LaPlace Transforms, 2d year Calculus; Moment Distribution Method - 2d year Structures; Atomic Reactor Physics - 3d year Physics; Settlement Analysis -1st year Soils; Phase Equilibrium of Soils Water - 3d year Soils; Finite Element Analysis or slope stability - presently done by an entry level engineer who pushes "Run" on the computer keyboard.
What happened that took the engineer from his exalted position to that of a mere mortal having lowly status? Was it because engineers failed to continually communicate to society how important they were? No - that was not it. The reason for the fall is because the reality of things is that after any discovery of any economic importance, economics demands propagation and application; propagation and application requires standardization and codification; and standardization and codification lead to the final resting place of all products, services, and technologies - commoditization. Thus it is that the same engineering that used to be dispensed from a godlike pedestal, is now a commodity - a commonplace.
So, where does this leave today's engineer and how should he be thinking about things so that his thinking is aligned with reality - and so he does not quit his job and become a software developer for http://www.pimpmylab.com/, or a shoe salesman? Well, that is the subject of a future missive.
To be continued ........ if I am not run out of town on a rail beforehand.
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