What do Engineers Really Do?

This is a an article I wrote in 2004 (I think) for the university newspaper. It didn't end up getting published, but the university young engineers committee decided to post it up on their bulletin board for several years.

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What do engineers do?

Image Source: http://designbuildsource.com.au/engineer-engineer

A recent survey conducted by yours truly involving twelve former colleagues and friends, left me with the somewhat surprising revelation that only two of the twelve people questioned actually thought they knew what an engineer did. What was further disturbing was that of the twelve people questioned, eleven of them were in fact enrolled in engineering at UWA. So I have decided to try and help demystify this strange and mysterious topic for those of you out there whom are silently thankful that it was not you I decided to question. 

Many of you out there may associate the word “engineer” with one of those yellow topped, loud and obnoxious, beer-drinking inhabitants of the Southern quadrant of the UWA grounds. However we are truly much much more than that... me thinks at least. In first year the formulaic response given to engineering students is that an engineer is someone who “combines the disciplines of mathematics, applied science and economics to help solve technical problems.” However, in layman terms an engineer is basically “someone who designs things that hopefully work”. There are several different disciplines of engineering; civil, mechanical, electrical and chemical are some of the more traditional streams. However in more recent years we have seen the emergence of new fields such as mechatronics, aeronautical, biomedical, mining, oil & gas, software and materials engineering. Here’s a rough guide as to what each profession does:

Civil: build bridges, buildings, roads, dams, hydraulics..etc

Mechanical: design cars, bicycles, equipment, machines, air conditioners...etc

Electrical: are involved in the design of televisions, mobile phones, computers, work in power stations…etc

Chemical: process raw materials such as petroleum, coal, aluminium and wood into refined products such as gasoline, pharmaceuticals, plastics and paper.

Mechatronics: combine the disciplines of mechanical and electrical engineering to make robots, control and automated sytems..etc

Biomedical: can design artificial limbs and organs, pace makers, hip replacements, hearing aids…etc

Materials: design and research the properties of existing and new materials, Nanotechnology is currently an area of growing interest in this area where people are looking into developing “smart materials” which can do clever things like having clothing that can adjust its temperature according to the weather

Aeronautical: design aeroplanes, rockets, missiles, spacecrafts…etc

Mining: are involved in designing processes to help extract raw materials such as bauxite, iron ore, gold..etc

Oil & Gas: involved in designing processes to extract oil and natural gases, can work in petroleum industry

Software: design computer software, programs and simulations

So if you were an engineer what would a day in your life follow? Well it really depends on what type of engineering you do. However undeterred in my quest to discover what it was that an engineer did, I decided to follow one. (don’t worry, I had his permission) The victim in question was a 30 year old civil engineer from GHD, a reputable engineering firm for the technically unsavy among us. He arrived in the office at approximately 8am and after making a cup of coffee he checked his email till about 8:45. He’d received roughly 50 emails over the night regarding various projects he’d been working on. There were no saucy emails in there or anything, much to my disappointment, except one involving a couple of dancing hamsters which was a disappointment in itself. He then started working on one of his design plans doing what looked like actual technical way-pro engineering work until about 8:47am when he remembered that he had a meeting to go to. The weekly meeting was in fact with his boss and other fellow colleagues of the company where the boss checked where everyone was up to on their job, checked their progress and addressed any issues of concern. My engineer man then returned to his cubicle at 9:30am and continued with his technical work until about 10am when he had to attend a meeting with a client to discuss where he was with that and to clarify a couple of issues that had recently arisen. At 10:45am mister engineer then returned back to his cubicle and started making and receiving various phone calls between several people such as the architect who was trying to figure out why his amazing water feature was no longer on the design, a draftsman who wanted to know some information regarding paneling, an electrical engineer who was clarifying how the building would be wired up and various other contractors. At 1:03pm my engineering friend took a break from his vigorous telecommunications and decided to go for lunch. At 1:45pm he returned to his computer briefly for about 12 whole minutes before leaving to go on a site visit to check how his building was going. He returned to the office at about 2:30pm where he made and received a couple more phone calls and did bits of work in between till 5pm when it was time to go home.

The results of the day were kind of surprising, the whole day I don’t think I’d seen him touch his calculator once!  Furthermore, when totaling up the guys allocation of time I noticed that less than 10% of this guys day had actually been spent doing hardcore engineering stuff! The guy had been basically chatting to people all day, granted they weren’t exactly what you’d call “social” chats but it was chatting all the same.

So you might ask why bother slaving your way through four or five years of your life in order to get a degree if you’re only going to use less that 10% of your knowledge? Well, it’s true you may only use about 10% of you knowledge the problem is you don’t know which 10% you’re going to have to use so you’re going to have to learn the whole lot and the same goes for any degree. We go to uni to learn HOW to learn, how to find solutions to our problems and to learn where to go or what kinds of people to consult for more information on a given topic.  In order to interact with the other professionals, a sound engineering background is essential. Without it, your building could collapse. When you’re interacting with the other professionals you’re actually trying to obtain as much information as possible regarding the project in order to satisfy all parties concerned.

Engineers have a great responsibility to society where a doctors mistake could cost him a patient, an accident by an engineer can potentially kill thousands in a single shot if a bridge falls down or an aircraft malfunctions. In my humble opinion, engineers are the glue of civilization. Without them we’d have no tv’s, no phones, no computers, no houses, no car and even no clothes (because an engineer would have to have designed the sewing machines used). So the next time you feel tempted to target a verbal bashing towards one of these harmless folk, just remember that one day the bogan you tried pissing on in the eng. building could grow up to build you a refined lavatory of your very own.