• Question: What do you think you are doing differently to others, who are also doing engineering?

    Asked by greshmaxx to Al, Emma, Ivanka, James, Omar on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Al Bartlett

      Al Bartlett answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Hello greshmaxx,

      In aircraft engineering you can’t do things differently to other engineers. We have a set procedure for the jobs we do because this ensures that the jobs are done correctly every time, if we all just did what we thought was best, somebody would make a mistake eventually and if there are passengers on the aircraft, it could cause a major catastrophe.

    • Photo: Omar Mustufvi

      Omar Mustufvi answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      It depends: if you mean people in other areas then I work on different technologies but even so, the main skills needed (problem solving, perspiring and perservering!) are very similar. In my area of hybrids it is important to think about solutions other than what has been done already, this is how companys compete with each other to develop the best product.

    • Photo: Ivanka Brown

      Ivanka Brown answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Engineering is a very broad term. For example, I did a civil engineering degree at university and I could have specialised structural engineering, water resources, wastewater engineering, traffic engineering, railway engineering, pavement engineering and probably more. I chose geotechnical engineering.
      A lot of the design work in the same type of engineering will be similar to other companies/engineers offering the same design service. People will always want to build things on the ground so there will continue to be lots of work to do. To offer an edge over competitors, engineers look for cutting edge new products or research to do the job quicker to construct and cheaper to build and maintain. As an example, the company I work for research how vegetation effects the stability of sloping ground. This means our team can often assure the owner (e.g. London Underground or Network Rail) tha an embankment is stable even when textbook answer will tell you it may fail.

    • Photo: James Vokes

      James Vokes answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      Specifics like day to day will be different but how we go about solving problems as “engineers” will probably be the same. We’ll have a problem:
      1. Work out exactly what the problem is. (Is there something missing or is something broken?)
      2. Design a solution.
      3. Try fix the problem with the solution.
      4. Test that it worked
      5. Any new problems because of how we fixed it? Yes: Go back to 1. No. We’re done!

      Most engineers will probably follow this list simply it’s just the “tools” that will change.

    • Photo: Emma Bould

      Emma Bould answered on 22 Mar 2012:

      I guess engineering on a Ship is different to what the engineers here do, although there is undoubtedly some commonality, even if it’s just the way we approach problems.

      Everyone will do things slightly differently because there are many ways to achieve the same goal (just look at the number of different designs of bridges around, they all achieve broadly the same goal….. taking a car or a person across something….. but they almost all look totally different)

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