• Question: Give me an example of a time in which you were effective in doing away with the “constant emergencies” and “surprises” that engineers often face.

    Asked by lauren to Hilly, Lee, Liz, Tadhg, Yasmin on 16 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: David Hill

      David Hill answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      The easiest way is to just delete all your e-mails!

      But on a serious note, you design systems to avoid unexpected situations, sometimes things change, and you need to adapt to that! Thats what the engineering job is all about, designing for a problem, then learning to react to changes in the problem!

    • Photo: Yasmin Ali

      Yasmin Ali answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      Haven’t had that many! Usually things are quite well planned out so we don’t have to deal with emergencies and surprises! For the project I’m working on now, I did a ‘lessons learned’ day last year, where I got all the team and loads of senior engineers in a room and we talked about past projects we’ve done and what has gone wrong… and how we can make sure it doesn’t happen this time.

      In the event of a surprise… you have to be a bit creative and do the best that you can to work around it.

    • Photo: Tadhg O'Donovan

      Tadhg O'Donovan answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      Good engineering avoids emergencies – I’m am glad to say I have yet to experience an emergency – other than running very late for a lecture

    • Photo: Lee Margetts

      Lee Margetts answered on 24 Jun 2015:

      I think I answered a similar question last week, but dont remember how I answered. This does not really happen in research or computer modelling. I have endless deadlines and I often feel that I’m working in a “just in time” mode, but that is fine – it makes you prioritise and concentrate on what is important. I have to deal with colleagues who do not work to deadlines. They seem to never complete their tasks and that is very frustrating.

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