• Question: What can you do in the career engineering to do with D&T and do any of you actually do a D&T based career?

    Asked by katiethekaratebuffalo to Becky, Carrie, Kelly, Robin, Usaid on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Robin Stafford Allen

      Robin Stafford Allen answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Design and Technology does sometimes concentrate on the artistic look of the object you are making, I can design the mechanism in a kettle, but a graphic designer would design the “look” of the object. There is room in the world for both types of people, and in fact a need.

    • Photo: Becky Selwyn

      Becky Selwyn answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      Engineering involves designing a product to fit a specification (a list of requirements), like you might have in a DT project.

      If you were designing an aeroplane for example, you need it to fly, fit a certain number of people in, and probably carry some luggage as well. So you need the engines and the cabin and a space underneath for bags. But you also need it to be the right shape so that the air resistance when it is flying isn’t too high (or the engines have to work much harder to keep it in the air).

      But as designing an aeroplane is a really big job you would only work on one small part of it. That part might be designing a valve in the engine, or designing the shape of the wings. A lot of the time what the product looks like is quite constrained by the specification (apart from maybe what colour it is, but then if you are designing something to be camouflaged even the colour would be specified!).

      In my job I have had to design some equipment for an experiment, so I needed to know the requirement of the experiment – it has to be done in a vacuum, I need to control the temperature, and I need to be have two vessels that I can separate when needed. So that helped me design the equipment. Next I have to do the experiments, which is more like science than DT I suppose, but I still enjoy it.

    • Photo: Usaid Rauf

      Usaid Rauf answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      When I was at school D&T was about going from some stuff you need something to do, all the way to actually building that something you need to do stuff. To me, this is Engineering 101.

      I think D&T taught me a lot about engineering, especially selecting materials and industrial processes for different products and applications. I think I use a lot of the skills I learnt in D&T because I have to ensure that our suppliers are capable of meeting our demands and expectations. I have to ensure that they produce materials and products of a satisfactory quality. So, I will look at what systems they have for manufacture. We will often go to test a supplier’s products at their facilities – this is called Factory Acceptance Testing.

      The other engineers might correct me here, but I don’t think you can do a degree in D&T, but engineering does steal a lot of its concepts!

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