• Question: Do you think your investigation is useful and has made a difference to the world?

    Asked by yang85080 to Alex, Chris, Harriet, Jed, Ken on 14 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by becky9995.
    • Photo: Jed Ramsay

      Jed Ramsay answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      When you say investigation, do I take it you mean all the projects I work on?

      I’d like to think I’ve made some positive changes to the world – although they are small in nature I guess! I’m pretty sure I’ve made things better for fish on the River Lambourn through improving the shape and flow of the river there. I’ve also reduced the chance of people being flooding in parts of Berkshire, which has helped a lot of people there. So yes, I think it has been useful.

      The other side of my job is keeping what is already working well in the same condition it is now – so sometimes it’s just about fixing things. Like last year our divers found huge cracks in a set of steel lock gates (that allow boats to travel) on the River Thames in Oxford. I helped to arrange for the lock gates to repaired in a record time and so kept the river open to everyone. That was pretty useful for some people!

    • Photo: Ken Gibbs

      Ken Gibbs answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      @yang85080: Like Jed, I am going to assume that you are asking whether my projects have made a difference to the world ? You betcha ! They have made a HUGE difference.

      In the early 1980s, around 12,000 children under 5 died EVERY DAY from polluted water and a lack of sanitary loos. Since then, many agencies have been working tirelessly to provide safe water and sanitary loos to communities, and today, it is estimated that “only” 6,000 die each day. You have to remember that the total population has increased by around 40% since then, so that our work has had a terrific effect.

      Why not come and join us and see how much we can together improve the situation further in the next decades ?

    • Photo: Harriet Fletcher

      Harriet Fletcher answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      I don’t know about the world but there are a few fish and surfers out there who probably feel better thanks to my work.

    • Photo: Alexander Zacheshigriva

      Alexander Zacheshigriva answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      If you look at specific projects that I worked on. Probably no. They made a difference to specific vessels but not the world as a whole. If you think of ship design as a whole then definitely. The world would be different if we didn’t have ships or had them badly designed.

Comments