• Question: What checks and balances do you use to make sure that you don't make mistakes?

    Asked by Star boy to Shruti, Mark, Faranak, Douglas, Charlene, Alistair on 4 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by yeeet.
    • Photo: Shruti Turner

      Shruti Turner answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      There are lots of things in place to make sure mistakes aren’t made: things I do myself, things that my supervisor suggests I do and then the things that I have to do legally to do the work I do. So, I make sure to plan out my work, complete it and then go over it for mistakes. I work as part of a team and I make sure to talk to them about my work and progress to get feedback and see if there are things that I haven’t thought about. In order to work with people we have to go through an ethics process where an independent body reads a report of what I want to do and then says yes that’s okay to do or no, that’s not safe to others or yourself.

      The main thing is to talk to your team and methodically work through the problem, right from planning to checking it at the end.

    • Photo: Mark Bentley

      Mark Bentley answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I use a lot of very accurate measuring equipment, also as I design all the kit I make I’m always in control of the manufacture.

    • Photo: Faranak Bahrami

      Faranak Bahrami answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      Usually, when you do a job, someone else has to also have a look at it and approve it, even when you get to senior roles you will still do that. I personally make sure that I log everything that I do in a lab book so I have an exact record of everything that I have done, so if I need to do it again it would be exactly the same. there are many standards that you can follow if you need to test something, the procedures ensure that you will have the same conditions everytime hence less room for error. My work will then needs to be presented to my supervisors, they are obviously more experienced than me and know a lot as well, so when I present it to them, they might point out something that I haven’t considered or if I have made a mistake. all of these to a side, in engineering you will always have safety factors, that would account for any possible errors and unwanted surprises that might occur.

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