• Question: do you ever get worried before taking part in a task that it may go wrong and something could go wrong?

    Asked by 653sftb43 to Matthew, Neil, Paula, Pete, Philippa on 13 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Neil Taylor

      Neil Taylor answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      Hi 653stfb43!

      Interesting question. I wouldn’t say that I get worried – but I do feel the responsibility to do the job correctly and to the best of my ability. I avoid worry by having confidence in the work I produce through following good engineering practice. This includes checking work to make sure it is correct.

      For example, if you were performing finite element analysis (often shortened to FEA – it’s some software where you draw an object, divide it into little blocks, and then ask the program to work out how the object will react to temperature/bending/stretching etc.), then you’d expect to see checks that included:

      1) Self checks – during and after building the model, asking questions like “does what I see match what I expected?” and “how do the results compare to a simple(r) calculation(s)?”
      2) Independent checks – requesting another engineer (who wasn’t previously involved) to check the model and perform her own calculation(s) to make sure it is correct

      So ultimately, it’s about following good engineering practice – and being confident in the work that you (with the help of your team!) produce.

      Hope this helps!

    • Photo: Philippa Jefferis

      Philippa Jefferis answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      I guess a lot of my work has the potential to go wrong if I don’t do it right – and mistakes do get made. However we have lots of checks in place that should stop mistakes getting through. Also because of the danger if things were to go wrong we always design with safety in mind and so do not take big risks. Also we design things that if something was to go wrong it would have a safety mechanism in place to reduce the impact.

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