Open thoughts

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

I'm reasonably well qualified – but not in engineering

I'm an ecologist, and I learned most of my real 'ecology' out looking at the real thing and working with land managers after I left college. IMy first job was pure manual work (rhody bashing at Ynys Hir). I learned an awful lot about everything from how to dig holes without knackering myself, to how strip and sharpen a chainsaw from my workmates who,if they had any qualifications, never told me about them.

On the other hand two of the most brilliant, insightful and inspiring ecologists I know are both professors.

Neil

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

Mmm..is this like showing how hard you are buy wearing tee shirts in the winter…
" I am a better model engineer because I didn't go to university.." sort of thing…
This has been discused in the Engineer at some length.
When the plumber who fixes your central heating ( because you aren't allowed to… not gas safe registered) is called a central heating engineer but doesn't know why the system should be pressurised..or the effect that that has on the boiling point of water. .
Sorry I just give upon it
I ( shudders) leave you with tracey emen 's explanation of "art"..what I do is art cos I'm an artist I'm an artist ' cos whar I does is art

[CrabtreeengineerParticipant @crabtreeengineer]

This really is an old chestnut that just opens a real can of worms! There have been many discussions in professional forums with a view to protect the name "Engineer" along the same lines as that of Doctor. Frankly I think that people are on a hiding to nothing with this approach as legislation already exists if you wish to use it as a title & the real problem stem from misuse of the name. Dictonary definitions vary but most indicate a person who either designs, constructs or maintains engines & this is probably where its roots are, but these days we seem to have all sorts of Engineers from Refuse Engineer, Sanitation Engineer, Sound Engineer, Software Engineer, when the truth of the matter is that most of these guys are glorified Technicians most of whom could not hold a candle to the average model Engineer in terms of real world Engineering skills. Very much a case of six munths ago I could not even spill ingineur now I are one!

To my mind the best Engineers we have produced are those that have completed full Engineer apprenticeships, not shelf stacking apprenticeships, & then have gone to gain academic qualifications! As an outstanding example watch "The profile of an Engineer" on Utube. That guy is an Engineer, hands on in every department, academic qualifications & membership of a Profesional Institute.

But then again I am biased having served a 5 year apprenticeship as a Fitter & Turner. When I finished my time in the mid sixties like many other spotty youths I thought I was gods gift to Engineering. However, when I started work in another Industry I found there were other guys who had not served an apprenticeship who considered themselves Engineers….yes….Graduate Engineers!

I quickly learned that as far as promotion was concerned in my new found vocation, whilst I could tell the difference between an ice cream cone & a Morse taper at fifty paces, I was pushing it up hill with a stick, battling Graduates for the rest of my career.

Eventually I realised if I can't beat them….well I had better join them…I gained an MSc. & with my practical experience I was able to eventually gain registration as a Chartered Engineer, a title I am indeed proud to use after my name. Far too late to make any real difference in my career, but something I am proud of never the less, & something I would encourage more Engineers to do.

A fully rounded Engineer these days needs to have both academic qualifications, management experience, finalcial accumen & also be prepared to get his or hands dirty with a flair for practical hands on work. Also….dare I mention it here….he or she also needs exposure to the black arts of The Elf & Safety brigade!

As a closing note, it is worthwhile to remember that the first Chairman of IMECHE was not a graduate but was indeed an outstanding Engineer whose name shall be remember long after many of the current batch of space cadets have passed on.

Enough of all this……lets turn up some swarft!

Regards R

[richardandtracyParticipant @richardandtracy]

I tend to think that a true 'Mechanical Engineer' is someone with enough knowledge, who if dumped on a remote area never contacted by the outside world, could create a second industrial revolution and bootstrap the locals into at least the late 1800's from a hunter gatherer existence.

There are not too many people with that knowledge, but they are the true 'Mechanical Engineers' to my mind.

Regards,

Richard

[David ColwillParticipant @davidcolwill19261]

It's worth remembering (especially when choosing a dentist) that in all classes, somebody comes top and somebody scrapes through. Qualifications (of which which I don't have any) have the advantage of structure and while there is no doubt that this is not always perfect it does tend to produce people with an knowledge of a particular subject. For many this is where it ends. If you were to find that the pilot of your plane taking you on holiday had learnt to fly 30 years ago and been left to carry on on his own you would be quite alarmed. The fact is that they are tested and trained continuously.

Another point is that you have to choose your subjects quite young these days and not many kids truly know what they want to do, so many just chase the money. Many people are passionate about their hobby ( whatever it may be) and will spend hours both doing and learning it. A university cannot turn someone with no talent or inclination into a good engineer.

The good news is that none of this matters. Here is a forum with all walks of life and every qualification under the sun and it is surely the better for it!

[Dianne BestParticipant @diannebest69516]

I attended technical college more than 40 years ago and it was quite obvious to me that only a few had any 'intuitive feeling' for what they were doing – they could make a mistake by an order of magnitude and have no sense that they had made a mistake while 'a gifted few' would look at that answer and say "That doesn't seem right…". In my career in engineering I noticed the same – that some people simply had a 'sense' for their work while most only knew formula and rules.

I am confident in designing almost anything but I look at the precision creations of my non-technical friends with tremendous awe and admiration and only WISH I could do half as well!

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

Hi Dianne Best

What makes a great Designer/Engineer

You name reminded me of another engineer in Australia Dianne Broddy **LINK** I attended a lecture she gave on her work in mechanical design. She started in the drafting office of a firm as a tracer (Tracing blueprints there were no copiers) and furthered her education by personal study to become a very prominent engineer designing seriously complex machinery in packaging, transport and many other industries including A CNC sheep sheering machine with the CSIRO in Australia and the US military. She holds forty patents. and has worked in many countries. I remember the lecture very well in particular her matter of fact approach to design using logical thinking. A very good example of a person learning as they go and rising to the top of her profession.

I suspect to be a good designer and creator you need the characteristics of a what the ancient Greeks called a polymath or later in Leonardo's Da Vinci's time a Renaissance man. Education in those times was very broad based, and over a long period of apprenticeship to a Master or Masters who you had to pay. It was very expensive.

However although universities today offer broad based education over many disciplines a broad based tertiary education takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money, there is no time for that in a specialised world. Industry wants specialist team players and is happy to pay for them, In most countries not a lot… maybe Germany is an exception with regard to engineers pay, they also have an excellent apprentice component to their engineering courses to broaden the students horizon.

These day's we specialise, design is by group and committee, It can work well but not always, particularly when the accountants get in the middle and cut the design to the bone often at the expense of durability and functionality for the end user. This process supports dividing engineering into small areas of specialisation.

But what of the Polymaths among us is there a place for them? I hope so,

It is one thing to brainstorm as a group…. A process that does get results but those results are tainted by politics, ego, economics and many other pressure points, Is it possible that these pressures might work against the idea before it has time to germinate so it never enters reality?

A polymath works alone most of the time bringing in experts as needed, the thought process is less pressured. I think this is whare the 'intuitive feeling' you mentioned comes to bear in the design process. Meaning "the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning" from one dictionary I read.

The most creative Engineers and Designers I have met have this ability. I am not suggesting they get it from thin air, It is based on the engineers broad based experience, formal study and observation of the world around them. The second part being the most important. Without an interest in the complexities in the real world around your chosen discipline you are left with theory and formula. I suspect somewhat less fertile ground for germinating ideas in the physical world.

This is also why less formally trained but inevitably inquisitive and broadly experienced Designer/Engineers do so well.

Regards
john

Edited By John McNamara on 16/01/2014 15:51:59

[Phil WhitleyParticipant @philwhitley94135]

What we have to fight against is the wave of political correctness, sweeping across the Atlantic from America, which states that you may not call yourself an "engineer" of any sort unless you have a degree. These people need to remember that the laws of thermodynamics were based on the study and measurement of steam engines. Luckily for messrs Thomson and Carnot, Messrs Trevithick ,Watt Et Al who were practical engineers and blacksmiths, had designed, built and operated steam engines long before the "lawmakers" arrived on the scene. Michael Faradays only qualification was an apprenticeship in bookbinding, he got the job as Humphry Davy's secratary on the strenght of presenting Davy with a bound set of lecture notebooks. Regardless of the field of engineering, if you can do it, you don't need paper qualifications, if you can't, paper qualifications will not help!

Phil, 5 year appreticeship, 3 years at technical college, National Diploma in Electrical ENGINEERING

61 years young, Dreadlocks down to my Ar*e, still learning.

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

20+ yrs ago, I was the 8th employee to be officially taken on at the birth of the computer retailer PC World. Part of my job was to be involved in nurturing the graduate trainees, I used to combine this with another part of my job, helping out in the final stages of fitting out the new stores during a massive & rapid expansion.

I'd fill a minibus with 'em & drive out to wherever we were needed. With no specific tasks in mind, I'd brief them to 'make themselve's useful' whilst keeping a close eye on how each individual performed.

I was looking for leadership qualities mainly, but often ended up wishing they'd just jump back in the minibus & insist on going home.

What we were doing, no one had done before. There wasn't a rule book or a set of standards to follow.

During one store commissioning, my attention was caught by this one young girl. She was taking control all over the store & everyone seemed to be listening & following her. It nearly brought a tear to my eye when she went outside, took control of the drivers & marshalled the lorries waiting to unload into order of importance.

A true leader !

Turned out that she was just one of the 'grunts' that the temp employment agency sent to fetch & carry. A young single parent earning a few peanuts whenever she could grab some childcare. Not even a CSE to her name.

I made sure that she got a good, full time job in that store.

2 yrs later & she's on the graduate trainee program, the fast track route to achievement

[Ian Simpkin 1Participant @iansimpkin1]

I served my apprenticeship in the late 70's as a Datsun motor vehicle mechanic. In about 1982, a six-cylinder OHC Datsun 280ZX sports car came in for a full engine rebuild after blowing its head gasket on the M6 motorway and cooking the motor. It had just about everything replaced, from crank regrind through to rebore and new valves & seats: the works.

When the mechanic came to start it, the car just wouldn't rev. It started & idled perfectly, but coughed & spluttered as soon as the accelerator was depressed.

The 280ZX is fuel injected and used the Hitachi version of the Bosch L-Jetronic electronic fuel injection. So, the fault just HAD to be attributable to the complex fuel injection.

To cut a very long story short, the mechanic who I had the privilege of being taught by, insisted it was merely a serious air leak on the engine's induction side.

But no, he was 'wrong' and four mechanics working over a period of well over a fortnight, did test after test, using the latest electronic computer diagnostics just could not find the problem.

As I was still serving my time, it came down to me to strip the engine and then the experts could see, diagnose and fix. About ten minutes after the overhaul began, I found nut-after-nut on the very complex inlet manifolds were just about finger-tight. The first mechanic had forgotten to tighten all twenty-odd of them and the engine was gulping air from where it shouldn't, and the computerised fuel injection could not keep up.

So thirty minutes later and the engine was running a dream. I will let you draw your own conclusions, but it was one of the most valuable lessons I learnt during my apprenticeship: Always Check the BASICS First…

[CrabtreeengineerParticipant @crabtreeengineer]

As I said earlier…a can of worms. My six inch Crescent wrench is bigger than your six inch Crescent wrench! And so it always was with Engineers. But its interesting to note that this reverse snobbery seems to be directed upwards towards Graduates. It hasn't always been so….time served Engineers have always been very protective of their status in life. Can anybody remember The Dilution Bill that was introduced during the wars?

With so many men conscripted into the fighting, Engineers were in short supply in the factories supplying the war effort. At this time the average length of an Engineering Apprenticeship was 7 years & the Old Country just couldn't wait that long for bullets & bayonets…so what to do?

Some old lag in Parliament pondered that whilst it might take that long train a fully skilled Engineer, many of the tasks, if broken down into repetitive basic steps, could be taught in weeks if not days.

So the dilution bill was legislated for, the idea being that some skilled Engineering jobs would be diluted down such that they could be carried out by non skilled people with no previous Engineering back ground. Butchers, bakers, candle stick makers, housewives even….found themselves being trained to operate capstan & turret lathes to aid the war effort, with a single skilled Engineer being responsible to set up several capstans or turrets.

As you can imagine this did not go down well in the Engineering trades & a lot of bitterness & resistance existed for many years, but frankly I'm certain my father didn't care who turned the capstan wheel….just as long as he got some bullets!

At the end of the war, many of these people returned back to their homes & previous professions, however, some of them enjoyed it so much they decided to stay in Engineering.

When I started work in the sixties, many of these guys were still there & in mumbled tones I would be introduced to the work force by the other lads. Oh…..don't worry about so & so….he's just a Dilutee!

Frankly, I didn't know for many years what the word meant…but I knew by the way it was uttered that it sounded bad.

I have always tried to take people at face value, & to me some of these Dilutees were the best turners we had in the shop, perhaps on only a single specific machine…but they were good at what they did. Yet…having worked in Engineering for years, they were forever labelled as Dilutees, never to achieve a skilled wage.

As the decline of heavy Industry started at the end of the sixties, so the rise of the Oil Industry commenced & we started a collaboration with a tool supply company to make drill pipe cross overs. One old cone headed flat belt drive Dean Smith & Grace was modified with a large coolant pump & a spade drill turret so that we could rough out very large & deep through holes in these cross overs. ( That old DS& G must have been over 50 years old then & never missed a lick drilling out 3 to 4 inch holes straight from a centre drill!)

A brand new centre lathe with tapered threading capability was purchased & set up in a special room with new tooling to cut previously unheard of threads such as IF regular 4 threads to the inch & the such.

Now…who was to be chosen by management to take on the task of operating this new machine & cut these threads to exacting API standards? One of the spotty youths just finished their time perhaps……no chance….it went to one of the trusted & reliable Dilutees! Frank Watson….wherever you are…may your Ward Turret never nip up at the headstock!

Downward reverse snobbery indeed….but the right man for the job.

As a side issue, I wonder if the old country actually has the engineering capacity these days to defend itself in terms of supplying ships, planes, boats & bullets? Perhaps we could just lob bankers at the enemy!

You show me an Engineer who doesn't learn something everyday of his life…..I'll show you a damned fool!

Regards

R

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

I won't go into it, you might find something on Google, I'll just say CTV building, Christchurch earthquake, result of ???engineering and design. Ian S C

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Perhaps we should all remember that it isn't how you gained your knowledge and skills that is important but how good you are at employing them. I have had graduate engineers working for me as well as those who gained their knowledge the hard way. I can assure you that there are good and bad in both. When interviewing candidates I always tried to find those who had a hobby interest related to engineering tto ensure that they had an interest in the job other than just the money.

Russell, (Chartered Engineer and European Ingeneur – retired)

[nigel jones 5Participant @nigeljones5]

I think most people have missed the point entirely! (step back and wait for it!!). First of all we have to define engineer….a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or structures.

synonyms:

designer, planner, builder, architect, producer, fabricator, developer, creator; More

In this we encompass a vast array of skills. I might be able to turn to within a thou but im not that good ad designing suspension bridges, if you get my point. Now if the question is, what is the interaction between acedemia and ability then a whole load of other factors come into play. It is a reasonable assumption that for a technical task someone of above average intellegance is immidiately at an advantage to someone with low intellegance. There are of course exceptions to every rule, but if you cant read a micrometer (old school with the digital age I know) then you are going to have a hard time producing a product to size. But this has no bearing on qualifications. Qualifications are merely a way of indicating to another person your presumed level of ability – but if you have no reason to need this proof then you are less inclined to pursue the qualification. This has little bearing uopn your ability. Me, I gained an HND in engineering followed by a degree in biochemistry. I can produce very good engineering work but you wouldnt trust me with a test tube (dont tell my employer I said this!). And the reason for this is that I enjoy model engineering, whilst I work in science because on paper I am good at it. Furthering the acedemic snobbery issue, my wife is a consultant Microbiologist and her best mate from school has just been made university professor professor at 40 – and beleive me, you wouldnt trust the two of them to wire a plug! I honestly believe that the qualification and applicational aspects are completely different qualities, sometimes they overlap to create a truely great engineer but for the most part they dont. Hope I havnt bored you all to death!

[OH CHUFF!Participant @ohchuff]

The problem really is that people like to feel superior to others and will point out what they feel to be a deficit in the others education or practical experience. I don't look down on people with degrees, phd or whatever but I am actually impressed by it. I don't look down on people without formal training especially if they display a natural ability for whatever they are doing and I am also impressed by that. My job title is service engineer but I don't consider myself to be an engineer. My hobby is working on Land Rovers, tinkering with guns and anything else I think I can fix. I work on central heating systems and gas boilers in particular. I went to a customers house some time ago and he was very keen to tell me I wasn't a real engineer, he asked what he should refer to me as because engineer was obviously wrong, when I said he could call me anything that made him feel better about himself he was offended. I asked this chap if he was an engineer as he seemed to go on about it quite a bit. Oh yes I am an engineer he replied and I think the term is being diluted by people like you.. And when I asked if he had a degree in engineering he said he had a H.N.C. So your a technician then I said, as an engineer has a degree. As well as plumbing and electrical qualification I have an O.N.C in mechanical engineering. You can call me a spanner monkey, a fitter, a technician or part swapper. I call myself a back street tinkerer but will probably offend the worshipful company of professional tinkerers by calling myself that. Who gives a monkeys!

Edited By OH CHUFF! on 17/01/2014 13:26:34

[The Merry MillerParticipant @themerrymiller]

More food for thought.

Professional registration in the UK

UK legislation is generally 'permissive' and, as such, the title engineer is not protected by law therefore anyone can call themselves an engineer or professional engineer or registered engineer and many semi-skilled and unskilled trades adopt this title. However the 'professional' titles awarded by the Engineering Council UK are protected by law. Registration as a chartered, and incorporated engineers or as engineering technicians is voluntary, and candidates are required to demonstrate a high standard of professional competence acquired through education, training and responsible experience in order to register. There are four categories of registration:

• Chartered Engineer (CEng)
• Incorporated Engineer (IEng)
• Engineering Technician (EngTech)
• Information and Communications Technology Technician (ICTTech)

Assessment for registration is typically carried out on Engineering Council's behalf by a Licensed Member institution.

The Engineering Technician (EngTech) may obtain the Licentiateship (with post nominals LCGI) a City & Guilds Award comparable to a Level 4 qualification. The Incorporated Engineer (IEng) may obtain the Graduateship (GCGI) in Engineering, comparable to a Level 6 qualification. The Chartered Engineer (CEng) may obtain the Membership (MCGI) in Engineering, comparable to a Level 7 qualification.

Hmmmmmm

Len. P.

[CrabtreeengineerParticipant @crabtreeengineer]

Well full circle then! Oh Chuff & The Merry miller have really drawn the conclusions! The story from Oh Chuff ends with "Who gives a Monkeys" Well obviously your customer does, but if he was such a bright spark why didn't his fix his own system eh! No……there is a large body of "Engineers" in the UK who believe that the title Engineer is being misused. One only has to look at The Linked In data base & read articals on IMECE sites to see people lobying MP,s to have legislation put in place to make it so. To those people I would refer you to my original posting, you are on a hiding to nothing by attempting to progress protection via the lobying route. Graduate Engineers are no better qualified than time served Engineers or skilled model Engineers in terms of real world experience, indeed perhaps less so, & have no right to claim sole use of the name of Engineer.

If however, one wishes to advance oneself & become registered with a Professional body, follow the guidelines set out in the response from The Merry Miller & on the various web sites of Professional Institutes. Once registered, your post nominal granted by the Institute & The Engineering Council is indeed protected by law.

If you need assistance &/or mentoring to follow this route, just ask, I am sure there are any number of Chartered Engineers on this site who would give advise & mentoring.

So…..everybody should in theory be happy, if you want the recognition & letters after your name, the route is open to you. If you don't want to go that route, don't try to get something for nothing by demanding that only Graduates are real Engineers.

So what have you turned up today? Me……I turned up a dummy 1.375 inch by 6 mm pitch lead screw so I can make some spare gear wheels for my TDI. Yes, I know I'm mixing my units…but its all straight in my head….trust me!

6mm pitch gets a real Whizz on doesn't it & watch out the helix angle doesn't bite your six!

regards

R

[ChrisHParticipant @chrish]

In the 1980's I worked in the engineering department of a dairy. We had a nice young lad come and work with us for a while who was on some sort of practical work experience part of his degree course, he was quite willing but still wet behind the ears as you might expect, not terribly practical at that age but into new technology.

We had some new (milk) bottle conveyoring on order that had to come across the dairy floor. Now the conveyor had to be level for the bottles, but the floor had a definite slope and we needed to know what that slope was so the conveyor legs could be made to ensure the bottle conveyor was as desired, level.

So straight after lunch one day I took him across to the dairy and set him the task of calculating the dairy floor slope, suggesting in the absence of any tools or instruments that if he got a length of clear hose sufficient to traverse the floor and then a bit, filled it with water, and made each end of the hose vertical either side of the floor, all he had to do was measure the height of water in the hose at each side of the floor and the distance they were apart and then it was just a simple bit of maths to get the slope angle of the floor.

Off he went muttering about how HE was not going to use 16th century technology, how there was bound be be an up to date modern way of doing things……… I left him to it – "learning by experience" my old workshop technology lecturer used to say.

Nearly four hours later he returned with the result of his calculations. I enquired how he had arrived at the result. After three and a half hours of struggling to come up with a modern technology method with which to calculate the slope, he sheepishly admitted that 16th century technology had something going for it after all…!

I was pleased on two counts, one – I had the information I needed, and two – the lad had learned a valuable lesson that afternoon in appraising situations and tackling problems. A win-win result!

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

The post above reminds me of one the new grad.s I had to puppy walk.
The problem posed was how many 0’s 1’s …9’s would be needed to ident a cable harness between
Two different wire numbers. Ie between say 12300 and 12567
Ok says puppy and goes off to derive his algorithm. ..after about a week (!)..the DO gets onto me..still havent got that answer….so I enquire..nearly done just got to test it…test it? Thinks I
..mmm best work out how to check this. .so half an hour latter I have a brute force programme to do same..but much slower. .we check puppies almost instant programme against my ten minute chugger ( note bashed in in half hour)..suitably “proven” with minor tweek this programme was issued to the DO for use.. ( turns out they had a total of 100 cable sets to enumerate ..sigh).
.now 100* 10 minutes would have got the job done in the first day..

And the minor tweek…wires have two ends both requiring idents….

[RJWParticipant @rjw]

Hilarious!

**LINK**

[MICHAEL WILLIAMSParticipant @michaelwilliams41215]

It was not my intention to generate praise or mockery of any particular grades of engineer .

The plain fact is that among the many engineers that I have known there have been both very good ones and very bad ones at all levels of qulification from professors to illiterates .

Higher levels of training and education are essential for specialist tasks but you can do some good engineering with natural instinct and really quite a lot of good engineering with quite basic training and education .

The most interesting types of engineer that I have met have been clever but for various reasons had not achieved any qualifications . That’s an odd one isn’t it ??

I think that the modern type of engineering education is so rigid that it completely stifles original thought . The people I am talking about tackled things backwards – they had many inventive ideas and then checked which were feasible whereas the over educated people not only had far fewer ideas but on basis of their ‘ knowledge ‘ discounted many which may well have been useful .

One of THE cleverest engineers I met had a degree in music . I’m sure everybody (except probably JS) will see immediately how someone with a music degree could be a very inventive person .

In my earliest days I had the honour of sitting in on a few technical meetings chaired by Hooker himself – already way past retirement .

After most meetings there was usually a loose discussion about anything really .

In answer to a question which I did not hear Hooker replied to some one with a variation of a well known comment :

” Higher education owes more to the jet engine than jet engines owe to higher education “

Regards ,

MikeW

PS: Thanks to the people who sent me pm’s on this subject . I will reply to each of you in due course .

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

Hi All

Or this recent boo boo

**LINK**

You have to wonder how the design of a building, almost certainly by a committee, could be so badly thought through.

As I said in my earlier post group politics can get in the way of good design and In this case politics likely did. Can we surmise that at least one of the group might have had some knowledge of solar furnaces? Why did they not speak up?

This is a multi million Pound project, surely they would have used experienced professionals to design and engineer it. And what about the green certification team were they asleep also.

Or is it the phobia the corporate world has against a negative comment making you are a pariah (and the pink slip awaits if you are one) in the modern business world? Yes is the only answer. Was not a single word spoken against the design?

With regard to who is and who is not an "Engineer"

To me it comes down to experience. Qualifications earned academically and or practically have equal value. The most important task is finding the right design and engineering abilities for a particular project.

. I mentioned Dianne Broddy in my previous post because she was not academically trained, in the beginning starting off in a drawing office, That did not stop her self training and ending up working as the senior project manager designer on projects around the world, many of the multi million dollar projects were food processing and canning plant, incredibly complex machinery together with large boilers autoclaves and steam processing equipment. She was and is although now semi retired in her 80's highly sought after. Because of this work she has been given several honorary engineering degrees. She is an expert in heir field.

It is of concern to me how legislators try to pass laws trying to restrict the use of common English words like the word Engineer. This legislation is lobbied for quite strongly by various institutes of engineering, the more restrictive they can make it the more fees they can collect. they support their case with the idea that they can weed out charlatans and unqualified people. All good as long as they leave the word Engineering alone. The Dianne Broddy's and the tens of thousands of others like her need protection from name grabbing.

Regards
John

Edited By John McNamara on 18/01/2014 01:10:08

[julian atkinsParticipant @julianatkins58923]

when one thinks of Cherry Hinds Hill and the late Dr J Bradbury Winter, the 'hobby' perspective of this thread rather speaks for itself!

skill isnt measured in qualifications or experience on the machine shop floor but what is produced in our sheds/workshops, and in the case of most of us how what we make then performs in service whether it be a track or some other arena. as in the above superlative examples, no engineering background is required.

cheers,

julian

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

Gee the London solar cooker was not the first…

**LINK**

Someone in the design team must have known there was a risk…

Regards
John

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Buildings singeing people's hair, good job I don't have much hair left then!

Edited By V8Eng on 18/01/2014 09:40:14

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