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Dear Colleagues,

I constantly feel bankrupt for good engineering ideas or in solving thorny problems. A colleague gave me a few good suggestions as per below. And a great 30p. chapter on pH measurement from our analytical instrumentation manual at the end of this note.

Engineering professionals have to be rational, sensible and regimented in their thinking with the critical work they are doing. You can’t go around being irrational when working on a high voltage system or designing a process control system for handling caustic soda. Sometimes this emphasis on rationality means you lose some chance to be creative. Creativity does require suspending some degree of rationality in thinking of all possible alternatives to a problem.

So if you are ever looking for an idea or approach for some intractable problem, let me refresh you on good old brainstorming. Which really works and can be enormously helpful in solving a problem or coming up with a slew of new ideas. Admittedly, many of the ideas generated are probably useless but there are diamonds hiding there as a product of your brainstorming efforts.

What do you do in brainstorming ?
First of all, participants should be reasonably at ease with each other. But definitely “their own person with their own ideas” and not be crushed into submission by the others in the group.

• Choose a facilitator to record ideas on large poster-size sheets of paper around the room.
• Pose an initial question. The facilitator should ask the initial question and then start scribbling down the suggestions from the group asquickly as possible.
• Identify the challenge and throw this open to everyone to consider and make suggestions.
• Suspend criticism. All ideas should be encouraged and recorded without comment or criticism from the group. Collect as many ideas as possible. Yes - quantity is more important than quality at this stage.
• Be silly with your ideas. Don’t be rational but consider all possibilities.
• Don’t evaluate the ideas at this stage. Don’t assess and consider the ideas now. Leave this till later.
• Build on each other’s ideas. Feed on your engineering colleague’s idea and build it out further.
• Drag the bottom for ideas. Keep grabbing ideas and encouraging new ones to come forth. Scratch the bottom of your brain for ideas. A hard process but ultimately rewarding.
• Review all the ideas after 15 to 20 minutes. Merge the concepts, bounce the ideas off the list, combine them and then use some rational judgment to come up with some good suggestions.

And then go back to being a rational engineering professional. Hopefully with a great solution to a previously intractable engineering problem.

In posting ideas for brainstorming as Cam Barrett says: ‘It's not about the length of the posts. It's about the passion’.

Thanks Kim T. Gordon for your great article on Creative Brainstorming Techniques and Margot Cairnes for your article on “Being Silly as a way to creativity” in the Engineers Australia magazine.

Japanese Tsunami Disaster
Peter Chan, one of the 80,000 odd readers of these notes, has put together a great pledge for the victims of the Japanese natural disaster. He says: ’The recent natural disaster in Japan has really moved me and prompted me to start a pledge campaign for the victims in Japan. My idea is to ask for website owners to donate part of their pay-per-click incomes to Japanese Red Cross. This pledge is strictly honorary and I do not take money from any one. I have created a blog to track all the participating websites and a pledge logo for website owners to post on their websites’. http://japanreliefpledge.blogspot.com

I don’t know about you; but this is applicable to anyone. Whether it is the Queensland floods, or the NZ Christchurch earthquake disaster or the Japanese Tsunami – every little bit of help is fantastic.

And a real thought-provoking video on our real motivators at work (not money or se-x, I might add)
Thanks to Simon Lucchini (a Fluor Fellow) for this great video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

If you are a manager-type or aspiring to be one – this should change some of your thoughts on the subject of motivation (esp. of engineering professionals).

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues,

Unconventional Wisdom about Management and Power - why some people have it and others don't by Jeffrey Pfeffer (professor of management at Stanford) has some useful tips for engineering professionals. As we have discussed extensively in the past, to ahead in your company and career, it is sadly not enough to be technical competent and sharp. Jeffrey reckons the following elements are critical to career success:

Ambition - you must believe in yourself and where you want to end up
Energy - you must be highly driven and proactive on a minute-by-minute basis striving to make things happen
Focus - prioritise - we all know there are a million tasks to do but you have to focus on the often unpleasant ones that make 'things happen'
Self-knowledge - make decisions on where you are going from paying attention to your personal observations and know-how of what has happened in the past
Confidence - be sure in yourself and don't hesitate to make hard decisions to press ahead
Empathy with your peers - try hard to understand your colleagues, what makes them tick and how to help them
Bulletproof demeanour - tolerate the inevitable conflict that comes from making hard decisions that are effective

Other interesting observations are that we always underestimate people's willingness to help us - from borrowing a cell phone from a stranger to asking for help from a seemingly disinterested shipping employee in expediting a critical piece of equipment for a project. And a topic which is a thorn in the side of many of us Engineering your ambition to forge ahead technically adept engineering types - it is vital to build up personal networks from exercising together, to sending friendly notes and emails, to calling a colleague in a distant city on his or her birthday.

And let's face it - achieving career success is critical to our long term satisfaction as engineers and technicians. What can be more demoralising than being stuck in a job slot - unrecognised and forgotten despite possessing so many additional talents waiting to be exercised and used.

I had a rueful chuckle over the comment from Ronnie Shakes:

I was going to get a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?

Thanks to George F. McClure of the IEEE for some interesting discussions and Jeffrey Pfeffer, Power - why some people have it and others don't, Harper Business, 2010.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues,

When NASA lost an expensive Mars orbiter (which burnt out descending too quickly) because a Lockheed Martin engineering deparment mistakenly used English units of measurement while NASA used the metric system for a key spacecraft operation, many of us probably sighed and thought of incorrectly configured software and data once again. According to yet another report (Standish), only 32% of software projects are successful with 24% outright failures.

However with the recent win of ‘Watson’, the IBM supercomputer, which/who beat several highly skilled humans on the show, Jeopardy, we probably wondered at the dizzy heights to which software is heading. Software is indisputably being embedded in every device we use today - whether you are in the civil, mechanical, chemical, electronic or electrical engineering worlds. Although I always develop a nervous twitch when I see a new supposedly remarkable software product being unveiled; developing software is slowly becoming quicker and more reliable than ever in the past

Glamour engineering at long last
Software engineering is without doubt one of the glamour professions today with enormous growth prospects. Even in the recent downturn, the need for competent software engineers continued to climb. There has been strong annual growth in software engineers over a decade of 25% (US Bureau of Stats) with only chemical engineers ahead of them in the salary stakes.

Software engineering is growing fast in a variety of areas ranging from the environment, statistics, health sciences, electrical vehicles and renewable energy.

However, the increasing complexity of systems and software requires an engineer with considerably more talent, experience and learning than ever in the past. Hence the desperate need for more competent graduates in this area.

According to a recent IEEE survey, we don’t want uncommunicative geeks
Inevitably, employers aren't necessarily looking for uncommunicative geeks (with '60W suntans'); but talented engineers who can communicate superbly, problem solve and are analytical in their thinking. And who can work in groups and show leadership. And who are connected to the real world. Organisations don't tend to appoint software engineers off the streets these days but someone with good credentials (often based around a good engineering school and some sort of profile and a strong background in the physical, mathematical or engineering sciences).

Most employers agree on one thing. Demonstrated ability to commence and finish a project successfully within a reasonable budget is one key characteristic a budding software engineer needs to demonstrate. The ability to "cut" or write (a colleagues uses a more derogatory term here) a program is only a small part of the skill of being a good software engineer. Other oft-neglected requirements are being to understand exactly what their customer wants and to be able to deliver a product that matches this requirement.

Help wanted but available with SWEBOK
With all the welter of misinformation surrounding what know-how and expertise is required in the software engineering area, there is help in the relatively recent and well structured (and freely available) massive tome of knowledge embodied in the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK at https://www.computer.org/education/bodies-of-knowledge/software-engineering ), presumably modelled on the successful Project Management Book of Knowledge). This gives an overview toolkit to software engineering with different knowledge areas (KAs) ranging from software requirements, design, construction, testing, maintenance, configuration management, engineering management, engineering process, tools and quality.

So what can you do about this ?

• Review the Software Engineering Book of Knowledge
• Embed software engineering in your career or use it more extensively in your area
• Measure future software engineers working with and for you on being able to communicate well, work in a group and finish a project on time and within budget
• Once again, look at chances to apply software engineering competently to your products to add value.
• Look warily at all your new software projects as to whether they are best practice in software engineering.
• Thanks to John R Platt of the IEEE for a thought provoking article.

Hopefully software wins in the race which Rick Cook refers to here:
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Once again; thanks so much for the ongoing encouragement from all you fine engineering folk (going on 80,000 worldwide now).

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Last week, I sighed in horror when I walked into a noisy hot industrial chemical plant and spotted the office-type commercial Ethernet hardware being used (with those weak RJ-45 connectors). Sure – you spend less money and get freely available off-the-shelf components, but you may get more problems than you bargained for. Admittedly this network is apparently still operating happily despite huge vibration, heating, power supply and moisture issues. But the risk is high that you will shortly be faced with public enemy no.1 for data communications - intermittent comms drop outs which are difficult to trace and fix. Industrial Ethernet costs a bit more but gives you a sure-fire assurance of performance.

Ethernet is apparently growing at the rate of 30% per year and is generally the preferred approach these days for industry. Once limited to office type networks, it is extensively used in the industrial industry but one needs to ensure that the industrial Ethernet variety is used with industrial type connectors and equipment rated for industrial temperature ranges, power supply fluctuations, high vibration and moisture ranges.

The good old Seven layer model
As you are probably aware, every communications system is based around the 7 layer OSI Model (Layer 1 - hardware e.g. copper connections/ Layer 2 - Data Link Layer – raw Ethernet frame / Layer 3 - Network Layer – for routing the packets using the IP address / Layer 4 – Transport – for assuring delivery of the packets / Layer 5 – Session / Layer 6 - Presentation / Layer 7 - Application Layer – e.g. http or ftp or Modbus/TCP)
 

Getting into the Hardware
The range of Ethernet at the hardware layer is from 10Base-T (10Mbit/s), 100Base-T (100Mbit/s), to 1 Gigabit/s and now 10 Gigabit/s Ethernet. And as my good colleague – Simon Lucchini at Fluor, noted – make sure your ‘Ethernet run in the field is mainly fibre; copper Ethernet is only used within the equipment rooms. It is very common to have very substantial fibre infrastructure run between instrument equipment rooms (dual 240 core cables)’. Fibre provides optical isolation and immunity from electrical interference.

Switching (you through) at Layer 2
Use industrially hardened switches – generally full duplex switches are the preferred approach. A switch (as opposed to the older hub technology) provides a dedicated segment for every Ethernet node. Ensure the power supplies for the switches are redundant or at least can handle ranges in the supply voltage.

Open Protocols and the Application Layer wars
As far as the other protocols are concerned, use of TCP/IP is a wonderfully open protocol - common to both commercial and industrial systems. IP provides you with routing capability (using the IP addressing) and TCP assures delivery of packets. There are some real time issues with TCP so one can also use UDP for transfer of non-critical repetitive data such as video.

Besides the choice of industrial Ethernet and TCP/IP where things are relatively straightforward - there are still some challenges with battles being fought at the Application layer with different vendors providing similar Ethernet solutions but with different application layer protocols which are incompatible. These offerings include: Modbus/TCP, PROFInet, Foundation Fieldbus HSE, Ethernet/IP which are not directly compatible.

Other necessary elements for your industrial Ethernet system
The other critical elements to consider are network security and network management. Every computer cracker in town wants to get into your network and you need a strong security architecture with workable firewalls and possibly VLANs (a group of devices on different networks that communicate with each other as if they are on the same secure network). Network management is growing in importance in industrial networks and allows you to monitor and maintain a network with useful statistics (e.g. packets lost / traffic intensity on a segment).

Although the various design issues in putting together a robust industrial Ethernet network perhaps seem enormous (esp. in troubleshooting data communications problems), as Benjamin Franklin remarked: Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

I see in a slew of recent newspaper reports that companies are increasingly hiring those technical specialists who have soft skills. To be quite frank with you, the need for engineering professionals to acquire soft skills often sounds like some sort of bizarre cop-out. As we all know, acquiring hard engineering skills and know-how is a tough and drawn out process – not only from studying but from hard won and often painful experience.

However, there is plenty of other evidence in looking at the careers of many successful engineering professionals, that focussing on building strong soft skills can be enormously beneficial to your career and also be a satisfying process. I do find in my day-to-day work that these skills are often ignored resulting in dysfunctional, unproductive and unhappy workplaces.

So while you definitely need to be as sharp as a tack with your engineering expertise, you should still pay careful attention to growing your soft skills especially as you increasingly work as part of a group. Or indeed, part of a virtual group – crossing cultural boundaries between different countries where soft skills are even more vital.

These so-called soft skills include such elements as communicating well with others, problem solving, conflict resolution, leadership, motivating others (including your boss), the ability to work effectively in the group, multi tasking (running with multiple tasks simultaneously), handling stress and the ability to innovate and create.

As you know, life in engineering is never Teflon coated but riddled with ongoing problems and challenges. One of the challenges we have on a day-to-day basis is troubleshooting and fixing the inevitable daily problems that come up and soft skills can be useful here.

Other skills are the ability to write in simple and clear English and communicating the right enthusiasm and attitude to everyone especially when the chips are down. This doesn't mean that you have to be yet another unproductive politician working your way around the company hierarchy, but in seriously adding value to your engineering environment. And naturally, these soft skills fit in well with good project management skills but they do go a lot further.

David Brinkley's comment is so true especially when you think about engineering projects working with limited resources and people who may not fit the requirements properly – here possessing soft skills can be enormously helpful: A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

When it comes to extensive use of CAD-based drawings, I sometimes wonder whether this comment is true: ‘What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance’ (Havelock Ellis). My good sparring partner, Dermot Kennedy (CEO of the firm I&E Systems – systems engineers) will perhaps forgive me for perhaps misquoting him below on an area he is passionate about – fixing our broken drawing systems, with some great suggestions, based on his work over the past 40 years:

Modern control (and related electrical) systems are some of the most complex of man’s works. They deliver economic gain and improved environmental conditions all around us. Their hardware cost follows Moore’s Law ever lower.

A complimentary chapter on Symbols and Equipment numbering from our drawings manual is at the end of this note...
 

Their documentation is growing in size in an effort to describe the complexity. System documentation is so costly and slow that it is usually curtailed by budget and schedule.

Is this surprising when you consider that we still use techniques over 100 years old?

We ‘draw’ circuits and ‘schedule’ cables and ‘write’ documents. To ensure that these all agree with one another we wait until the last one is complete and then ‘check’ them. We have numbering systems for drawings, documents, equipment tags, cables and panels etc. Information is only accessible to those who can navigate this mess.

Normal drawings have the underpinning of scale but electrical and control drawings do not. So the allocation of information to individual sheets is left to tradition; no help with modern systems. An individual item may be partially described on 50 or more drawings and then, as a consequence, when an equipment number is changed the physical change may cost less than 1% of the document revisions. The usual result of this is that the drawings are never kept up to date.

Some control systems perform safety related activities and are subject to a mandatory requirement for accurate information. Traditional documentation is never adequate to show compliance. And the real answer is not to add another check list. We can thus continue with the traditional CAD based ‘hard-wired-everything-locked-in-place’ approach or venture into use of better techniques and software.

An obvious solution (which is mostly ignored) is to build a multi-faceted model of the system – a prototype in virtual space with all the characteristics required of the planned installation. And the activities emulate the real work of building the system:

1. Select the equipment and create the individual components required
2. Locate and assemble them appropriately
3. Connect them together
4. Configure circuits and application code to give the desired functionality
5. Check the end result
6. Now the model can be published to give MTO’s and any printed documentation required for the final implementation

Add me as a friend on Facebook to download chapter two on Symbols and Equipment Numbering from our drawings manual.

Attend a thought provoking debate and presentation (‘Why our drawings systems are broken and what to do about it’) on the best way forward in terms of bringing our drawings systems into the twenty first century. In order to establish credibility, we will use a number of drawing packages to illustrate some of our points with real examples from engineering projects; but I hasten to tell you that we do not endorse them.

The 45 minute web conference is on the 2nd March 2011. Drop This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. a note if you want to be sent further details.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

The ‘pot’ or potentiometer as it is called, is one of the workhorses of electrical and electronic engineering. I believe we can all still remember working with a pot on some sideline design or in a work related application. They have been around a long time. There are more sold than any other form of position sensor. Simple, cheap and small with no real obsolescence problems. So as Mark Howard asks: Why today does every designer look for a non-contact alternative?

Going potty about pots

For those that don't remember clearly - a potentiometer or 'pot' is a three-terminal resistor with a sliding contact that forms an adjustable voltage divider (Thanks Wikipedia). Commonly used to control electrical devices such as volume controls and can be used in a control stick or level indicator or position transducer. As evidenced when my student buddy in an engineering lab tried to control a large electric motor with a potentiometer drawing full the current and it disappeared in a gigantic smouldering bang; they are not used to control significant amounts of power (more likely a watt or less). A potentiometer could be used to control the switching of a Triac to indirectly control the brightness of a lamp.

The Nemesis of pots

Because of perceived problems with reliability (and indeed wear and tear); these days we typically are always on the lookout for non-contact alternatives. Thus pots are not considered uber-sexy any longer. Why the unreliable image ? Pots can be rated for 500,000 cycles and can thus be good for 5 years or more (with linear displacement changes every 5 minutes). There are three main causes of pot failures: vibration, ingress of foreign matter and extreme climatic conditions. With vibration, the pots wiper is normally at the same place most of the time and significant wear occurs producing a flat spot with no electrical response. Extreme environments can produce condensation on the wiper and corrosion.

So in harsh environments one needs to seriously consider alternatives. But for the average application, one should realize that pots are still extraordinarily reliable and will work perfectly.

Be Wary

But if you do need to change to a non-contact approach - be wary (and afraid) ! Besides costing more, non-contact alternatives often produce a digital electrical output. So your entire associated electrical system may need to be redesigned from analog to digital. And then retested and approved. Quite a considerable additional expense! In addition, pots are normally very compact and you may find the non-contact alternative is considerably larger, causing a mechanical re-jig of your system.

A few take away lessons on the 'pot':

• Don't despise older technology - it often gets the task done and is effective
• Marketing often relies on high tech so-called improvements which aren't better than the old and tested approach – often considerably worse
• When you do make changes to your engineering design with a new component; the biggest impact may be on all the associated interfacing equipment.
• Ensure your components are matched to the entire range of the engineering environment.

I hope with my weekly commentary, the following comment from Gertrude Stein is not true ? Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
Thanks to Mark Howard of Zettlex Ltd for an interesting article., Wikipedia for your information and Rod Elliot for a great informative web site on pots.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

As engineering professionals we are all trained to be logical and rational and rely on proven facts in making decisions. The approach with engineers is to vigorously apply the blowtorch to any concept which is rather nebulous and stick to solid engineering design practice. However as Margot Cairnes, a leadership strategist recently pointed out: ‘This often means being conventional, boring and underperforming (when creating solutions to difficult problems). In a changing world, creativity is essential, not only to keep pace with change but to be at the crest of the wave’.

I am sure you have been in numerous engineering meetings which grind on and on regarding some trivial but critical design issue. Important, perhaps in many cases. But we submerge our creativity under this overwhelming conventional but safe engineering thinking. It is staggering how many brilliant and effective products are out there which were created through creative thinking and “thinking foolishly”. These range from products as varied as the 3M Post it Note, the Kreepy Krauly pool cleaner, the iPod to the ubiquitous telephone.

Here at work, we brainstorm foolishly at times when designing new services or products. Initially my rational engineering mind is irritated and uncomfortable. However, when creative impulses intrude, the crazy content which appeared illegal, unsafe and even dangerous, can, with a more chaotic and lateral vision begin to appear quite stunningly brilliant. The trick, when the ideas are flowing, is to get other people to comment on them and to turn them around and see whether they can be made useful and productive. 

When you are engaged in another meeting examining a difficult problem; be foolish. According to the Entrepeneur magazine, the following framework is recommended:

• Pose an initial question to get the “show on the road”
• Identify a challenge which you want to solve
• Suspend criticism of all ideas that are presented
• Postpone evaluation whilst the ideas are being presented
• Build on others’ ideas in a fast paced manner

Do not risk life and limb, but as the inimitable Steve Jobs said many years ago: ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish.’

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear colleagues

First of all - best wishes for a great 2011 and thanks for reading this. The signs are that this is going to be an excellent year for engineering professionals - no matter where you are in the world, the demand for your services is rapidly increasing. As we have the northern hemisphere in the grip of a ferocious winter, a few thoughts on the technology and engineering of skiing and snowboarding and how it reflects on your engineering work.

On the overall physics, there is little to distinguish skiing and snowboarding. Both rely on converting potential energy (= mgh) to kinetic energy (= m v squared / 2) when swooping down the hill. The principle of movement is based on ice being slippery because pressure melts the ice leaving a thin water layer - no heat is required, nor is there any necessary friction - the reason why extremely cold ice is less slippery (thanks Will Stewart for clarifying this). This forms a thin layer of water which lubricates the bottom of the surface of the snowboard or ski thus allowing those incredible speeds.

However, while the physics is the same, the bio-mechanics of both sports differs dramatically. The skier keeps her centre of mass neatly between the two skis, thus avoiding falls when turning. Whereas the snowboarder, has to be vigilant to avoid his mass centre moving beyond the board's edge (esp. when changing direction). This can end in some horrible falls. Greater speeds are achieved by skiers as they divide their weight across two surfaces (against that of snowboards with the entire body weight on one surface). This generates spectacular speeds of 250km/h for skiers against that of snowboarding at 200km/h (naturally, you would be one of the top performers to achieve these numbers).

Perhaps one safety advantage of snowboarders is tumbling at a high velocity when things go awry. When a tumble does occur, for the snowboarder, as his frame is intact on a single surface (both legs and body locked together tightly on the board), there is not the same chaotic frenzy as for a skier with all four limbs going independently in different directions.

So what does this mean to us as engineering designers ?

Well, as Laura Moncur remarks: We make our gadgets our own by the way that we use them, with or without the permission of the manufacturer.

So while you need to ensure your engineering design is best practice, you need to consider all the possible ways your user is going to misuse it. Sometimes this can be extraordinarily hard to visualise. As Douglas Adams wryly observed (this is my favourite quote btw): A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Thanks to the Economist (and the readers) for some interesting thoughts on these two great sports.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

I am always filled with some horror when I look at the quality of documents I have put together some time ago. So, an improved version on Myths and Best  Practice with industrial data communications and hazardous areas at the end of this. Forgive my terse dispatch this week, but I am on the road drumming up support for our engineering degree programs from various universities and accreditation authorities.

Here I list some practical guidelines when applying your next (preferably industrial) Ethernet, Wireless, Fieldbus or RS-485 project within a hazardous areas. While Europe (and Australia/Africa/Asia) are enthusiastic with intrinsic safe solutions to hazardous areas, explosion proofing and encapsulation are still very popular in North America. But this picture is changing. This is worth reading as data communications in hazardous areas are becoming increasingly used.

As you know intrinsically safe protection limits the energy entering the hazardous areas to a level incapable of igniting any gas or air mixture under fault conditions (when a cable is broken or a device fails). As most people would know, Profibus-PA and Foundation Fieldbus (and indeed HART) provide a good intrinsically safe solution (they use the same physical layer) at the instrument level. At the higher levels things are a little bit cloudier (but perhaps getting easier with intrinsic safety).

Ethernet

With Ethernet, there are three approaches possible:
• Multiconductor copper cable
• Fibre Optics
• Wireless

The classic wired approach (copper !) for Ethernet requires the cable to be safeguarded against unintentional interruption or connection (according to IEC 60079). Ethernet can also be connected through a Wireless LAN with access points mounted in hazardous areas with (Ex em and Ex q) protected housing with intrinsically safe antennas. Ethernet based on fibre optics cable (it has to be Ex is op, of course) is also a great solution as it provides galvanic isolation and immunity to electromagnetic interference. Connections can be interrupted by live work during operation and earthing/grounding, surge protection, screening and shielding are obviously not required. But installation can be challenging with fibre (although I aver this is considerably easier than a decade ago).

An increasingly popular approach is intrinsically safe Ethernet with two galvanically isolated converters are the end points of a copper based (intrinsically safe) Ethernet system. No grounding or isolation requirements due to galvanic isolation. And no specialised installation knowledge required. Good where there is a high risk of cables breaking.

Make sure you are using real industrial Ethernet though. Not some ‘wishy washy’ commercial hardware which can’t withstand the brutal industrial environment.

Wireless

While explosion proofing and encapsulation is not easy to apply (a steel encased cell phone !); wireless intrinsically safe transmitters are becoming increasingly cost effective and indeed, available.

I think this is often true of much of our work in engineering - All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning (from the great French philosopher, Albert Camus)

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues,

As an engineering professional, you have no doubt come across MCCs (or motor control centres) at some time in your life. This is an assembly of one or more enclosed sections having a common power bus, mainly containing motor control units. This can include variable frequency/speed drives, PLCs and metering. Typically, but not exclusively, used for low voltage 230 Vac to 600Vac motors. Each motor controller contains a contactor, overload relays, fuses or circuit breaker to provide short-circuit protection and an isolator. Traditionally, everything is hardwired and electromechanical components are still common practice.

Over the past few years, there has been rapid growth in the new intelligent MCC which provides far more now, with three main components – a communications network, hardware and software. Intelligent MCCs provide real-time monitoring and detailed diagnostics – monitoring motor current and thermal capacity, providing protective troubleshooting functions and detailed diagnostics to identify and correct problems. All in one seamless integrated package.

Intelligent MCCs can thus provide great cost savings in terms of quicker and easier design, installation and documentation and often arrive on-site pre-configured and almost ready to operate. There is also a significant reduction in cabling requirements, the plethora of terminal boxes and control system I/O.

A few pointers below in your next MCC design…. if you don’t know them already:

Over the past few years, there has been rapid growth in the new intelligent MCC which provides far more now, with three main components – a communications network, hardware and software. Intelligent MCCs provide real-time monitoring and detailed diagnostics – monitoring motor current and thermal capacity, providing protective troubleshooting functions and detailed diagnostics to identify and correct problems. All in one seamless integrated package.

Communications networks – a great array of new protocols here. Go for the one which is supported by a trusted vendor; but ensure it is one of the more common ones based around Profibus-DP/ProfiNet/Modbus/DeviceNet/Ethernet TCP/IP. Don’t let anyone bully you into a particular protocol unless there are very good reasons for it. And ensure it is open and widely supported. Take especial care with earthing/grounding and isolation with fiber preferable to avoid those intermittent communication drop outs due to electrical spikes/surges.

Maximum Network efficiency. You can now configure devices to report data as often as you want. Obviously don’t report data unnecessarily – a rapidly changing process could require an update every 50 milliseconds and a slow moving process could mean every 60 seconds. Or communicate only on a change of state. Diagnostics information can be accessed whenever convenient.

Online changes when the system is running. Many network configurations don’t allow real device changes (and we make them all the time especially when commissioning the system); so ensure you can reconfigure/ add in new devices or modify existing parameters without having to shut down the whole intelligent MCC system. So the traditional daisy-chain topology may not be ideal for a robust reconfiguration of one or two devices while the system is running.

Documentation. Nothing is more tedious than tracking down documentation relating to a part. Ensure that the electronic documentation is stored on the intelligent MCC system and accessible from your PC where you can not only view real time status of the system, but CAD drawings (as built – not three versions out of date), manuals and spare parts information.

These new intelligent MCCs are hopefully not so advanced as to fall into Arthur C. Clarke’s suggestion:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from wizardry.

Thanks to Wikipedia for great references.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

In essence, the more experience a firm has in producing a particular product or service, the lower its costs are. Fairly obvious one would think, but something we often don’t consider when planning a large project or job (especially one which has a degree of repetition in it). The Boston Consulting Group noticed that a semi-conductor company’s unit cost of manufacturing fell by about 25% for each doubling of the volume produced. Hence the conclusion that costs can decline by 20% to 30% in real terms, each time the accumulated experience doubles. This law has been known since the WW II when building aircraft. Effectively less labour is required for a given output, depending on the level of experience. Properly managed, experience can facilitate improvement. So this shows the folly of a company replacing experienced engineering professionals with young hacks at a far cheaper rates. Experience and a company’s value reside in its human capital. People. And if talent is not recognised, it leaves the firm and takes away a lot of value and indeed, cost effectiveness of that firm.

Obviously there are ways of bypassing this law in reading up about new techniques, training staff intensively to pass on the knowledge and hiring highly experienced people. And, innovation and change can make this whole approach of the experience curve dead in the water. Innovation can thus leapfrog the experience curve. For example, experience in manufacturing black and white TVs is not of much particular advantage.

What can you do about it ?
The important issue is to realise that you can make greater profits at a lower risk by trying to focus on building up your store of experience in your business.

And naturally, you can budget on the hours spent in reviewing/turning around certain repetitive tasks will decline as the project matures.

As the old saying goes: Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

Thanks to the Economist, Joseph Sherman and Rahul Sha for some interesting discussions in producing this note.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Imagine scanning a broken part that is no longer available (for your vintage car) into your computer and then printing out (in 3-dimensions) a replacement in plastic in 60 minutes. A few further adjustments and then you print out the finished version (which you may also give to a machinist to make a metal copy of). This is what is happening today throughout the world – a good example being Mr Jay Leno (the well known hated and loved celebrity) who has his own 3-d printing machine to keep his fleet of old cars on the road (in this case a 1907 White steam-driven car).

These new 3-d printing technologies will undoubtedly have an enormous impact on your work as an engineering professional. Whether you are a plumber fashioning out a difficult to find part or an aerospace engineer creating the aerodynamic ducting on a jet fighter, so it is worth finding out more below..…

Some basic 3-d printing details

Some other terms used are ‘additive’ (and ‘subtractive’) manufacturing. Or simply, ‘3-d printing’. Some of these printers are small enough to fit on your desktop and are appearing everywhere from the consumer/hobbyist to the large sophisticated manufacturing facilities ranging in price from $10,000 (where laser printers were many years ago) to millions of dollars. Printing takes typically an hour for a small simple object with accuracies (at present) of slightly under 0.1mm. The market size was $1.2billion in 2008 and this is estimated to double by 2015. Model making and rapid prototyping are the key uses at present.

One would have thought that with all the incredible 3-d visualisation software available on computers that this would be the key approach; but people simply love to physically hold an object in their hands before commencing a major manufacturing investment. And 3-d printing makes economic sense – Timberland used to take a week to turn out a model at a cost of $1200; now they do it with 3-d printing (from Z-Corporation) in just over an hour at a cost of $35.

It works – layer by layer…

There are a variety of different approaches to 3-d printing. But the first stage is to take cross sections through the part that you want to create and to let the software compute how each layer needs to be constructed.

The traditional approach has then been to squirt a thin layer of liquid resin (plastic?) onto a bed and in using an ultraviolet laser to make it harden to the required pattern. The build tray then descends and a new liquid surface is applied to this layer and the process is repeated.

Another approach followed by Z Corporation is to use a modified form of inkjet printing and to squirt a liquid binder onto a bed of white powder where the layer needs to be solid. Colour is also applied, allowing multicoloured products to be developed. The bed is then lowered a tiny amount and a new layer of powder is spread on top. The next layer of liquid binder is squirted onto this and the process is repeated.

A third approach (from Stratasys) is to feed thermoplastic material from a spool through a moving extrusion nozzle, heating it and then laying it out in the required pattern on a tray.

What are people doing with this technology ?

In addition to ones noted above, there is an incredible range of products being created with this impressive technology. From creating models of video characters to products in consumer electronics, aerospace and car manufacturing. Extending to artists and design studios. Firms are setting up to create products cheaply and effectively and shipping them all over the world. Your local printing store may just be about to install a 3-d printer to offer this service. And naturally, watch out for new tiny digital fabrication stores appearing in your street. The open source RepRap Project based at the University of Bath in the UK, has produced designs for a printer which can be built for $700; with thousands of printers already being built around this design.

How can you seize the moment here ?

This new technology is going to touch all engineering professionals and it is worthwhile finding out more.

• Read up on the topic and think how you can apply it to your work and applications
• Consider how you can cut costs and improve output and quality using this technology
• Consider the commercial prospects in purchasing your own machine
• Do some lateral thinking of where you can apply 3-d printing in unusual ways

In attempting these new technologies – as Robert Rodriguez says:

Only by seeking challenges can we hope to find the best in ourselves.

Thanks to the Economist, the RepRap Project, MIT and Z-corporation for some interesting reading.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

‘You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not? (George Bernard Shaw). I believe that one of the great signs of leadership is in questioning what you do, in identifying new ways of doing things and taking your co-workers or organisation to innovative and new territory.

Leadership is something that all great engineering professionals should work on achieving. Business and life is extraordinarily turbulent at present. And I believe we often get swept along in an organisation because we don't take control of our lives and have some mediocre manager running our lives. As we all know - engineering professionals like working in the technical area and leadership is often not on the agenda. But it should be !

Why should you bother to read further ? Well; leadership is something you should actively consider engaging in more aggressively to benefit your engineering career. No matter whether you are an electrician, technician or engineer.

Download two chapters on leadership at the end of this blog.

There are incredible leaders such as Shackleton of Antarctic fame who recruited his crew with the incredible advert which drew thousands of applicants (‘Men wanted for hazardous expedition. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.’). But leadership is most definitely not something that only a few people have. We all have these skills to some extent – some greater than others. It is about taking ownership and driving yourself further develop your leadership skills with greater enthusiasm and showing a stronger questioning attitude about everything you do.

However at all levels engineers and technicians need to seize ownership - drive innovation and real improvements - thus benefitting customers and increasing profits and improving your day-to-day life and those around you.

There is a definite shortage of good leaders so it is advantageous to work on these skills. Obviously some of the disadvantages of being a leader are perhaps additional stress and the considerably greater responsibility in impacting on other peoples lives.

Engineers need to be influential. At all levels of an organisation, engineers should play a significant role in driving innovations that will benefit customers and increase profits and possibilities for everyone.

What is leadership ?

Leadership is simply the ability to get things done with a group of people. There are three key functions:

* Develop your co-workers (Select the right people/tutor and train ‘em)

* Motivate your co-workers (Understand them and mentor them to achieve)

* Equip your co-workers (direct your co-workers as well as identify and obtain the  necessary resources for them)

As far as the distinction between management and leadership ? Warren Bennis says:

‘Management is getting people to do what needs to be done. Leadership is getting people to want to do what needs to be done. Managers push. Leaders pull. Managers command. Leaders communicate.’

The following are a few reasons why you, as engineering professionals, need to apply your leadership skills:

* Being technical only is not sufficient for your career success.

Technology changes all the time. And how many times have you seen someone who knows nothing about engineering taking a management or leadership position ? However, your engineering know-how coupled with leadership puts you in an incredibly powerful position.

* Leadership is far more than being a manager.

Managers are often appointed. Leading and managing are often different skill sets. They may have been bumped up to a higher level as they have been so long in the organisation. You can show real leadership and technical know-how and be far more successful. * You can guide your less experienced peers. You can provide direction to lower level engineering professionals in your organisation. And influence them in a positive way.

* You can influence the decision makers.

You understand engineering and technology better than most people and can help these high level managers make the right decisions to grow your organisation.

* Great projects only succeed with great engineering leaders.

How many mediocre managers do you know that are in charge of engineering projects ? Help these managers with great leadership.

* You get greater satisfaction (and dare I say, ‘fun and excitement’) in your day-to-day work by being a leader and showing creativity in driving your organisation to success. Surely, you can get greater satisfaction in your career by showing imaginative new ways of taking your firm and career to new heights. Rather than being stuck in the same old way.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve 

Dear Colleagues

Please forgive me dear (engineering) reader (and perhaps, gardener) but surely there is nothing more irritating than the strident noise of lawnmowers or mulching machines with their staccato crackling sound on a quiet Saturday afternoon ? In my book, silence is often more desirable than privacy. This short note is on noise and why and how we deal with it.

The decibel

The decibel was created in the 1920’s by the Bell Telephone Labs and is widely used in audio measurement. A write up on audio (and public address systems is contained at the end of this note). The decibel is ten times the logarithm of one power quantity relative to a reference quantity. The difference in decibels between two powers, P1 and P2 (the louder one) is 10 log (P2/P1) dB where the log is to base 10.  So it can easily be used to measure the level of everything. The most common usage is of loudness (of noise) - or relative sound pressure. If you halve the power (relative to the reference source), you reduce the power and sound level by 3dB (10log(1/2)).

A complex animal

Sound and loudness is quite a complex animal. On the transmitting side, it depends on the frequencies and amplitudes; while on the receiving side (the ear); we have a non-linear device with an enormous dynamic range. Non-linear means that the ear is not equally sensitive to all frequencies but works best from 1kHz to 5kHz (presumably the noises emitted by our predators in prehistoric times). A weighting curve (or filter) is thus used to make sounds measured by “non-ear” devices such as microphones and other acoustic devices more representative of what people actually hear. The one most widely used today is the A weighting scheme and thus we refer to dBA when talking about noise.

(Interestingly enough, the human eye is similar – twice the amount of Lumens or light does not look twice as bright – you need to increase the light intensity by ten times to achieve this).

Crazy examples of dBA

Typical numbers for dBA include:
• Just audible is 10 dBA
• Soft whisper at 15 feet is 30 dBA
• A quiet office is about 40 dBA
• Air conditioner, normal speech, 60 dBA
• Noisy restaurant, freeway traffic, noisy office, 70 dBA
• Hearing protection recommended at 80 dBA
• Heavy truck in traffic measures 90 dBA
• Rock concert is 110 dBA
• Thunderclap is 130 dBA
• Jet air ops on a US Navy carrier deck is 140 dBA

Sound becomes irritating when averaged over 24 hours, it exceeds 65dBA.

Reductions in noise – really ?

There has been a significant reduction in noise creating devices. As a growing example, electric cars have become dangerously quiet (and can be a danger to pedestrians). The biggest noise on the road these days is the ‘screech and whine’ of rubber on the tarmac. Airports have become more subdued with the insistence on use of high-bypass jet engines (with slower turning compressor fans). And welded track and electric locomotives have made noise from the railways more acceptable.

However machinery makers have been a bit more reluctant to keep their noises down. Because it costs them. Most countries set 85dBA as the maximum level of noise (up to 8 hours at a time). There has been the suggestion, that domestic appliances are deliberately made louder to make them sound more powerful than they actually are (e.g. a blender) Although OSHA in the USA allowed unsilenced machines to be increased from 90dBA to 100dBA (thus allowing a doubling in loudness). This has made it increasingly difficult for Americans to sell their products outside the USA (e.g. into fussy but shrewd Europe)

Noise cancellation

Noise cancellation can work either at the source or at the listener end. Sometimes. And not always perfectly. The closer your noise is to a point source, the easier it is to cancel. But bear in mind that a large shape radiating noise from all surfaces in all directions would be almost impossible to apply noise cancellation technology to (thus best to engineer the noisy machinery to be quiet). And low frequencies (large wavelengths) are easier to dampen, since the distance between the noise source and noise dampener needs to be significantly less than the wavelength of the noise to work properly.

So what can you do about this ?

• Consider noise reduction as a key element when engaging on your next project
• Be aware that everyone is increasingly demanding quieter machinery
• To make your product more saleable and your workforce happier – go for quieter equipment
• Look at opportunities to dampen noise in all your designs

I wondered about the rather irate (and perhaps patronising ?) note from the noted philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer:

The amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity.

Thanks to The Economist and Joe Wolfe of the University of NSW for a great web site on audio.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

‘A sheet of graphene (a form of carbon that appears as hexagonal shapes arranged in a flat layer) the same thickness as plastic refrigerator wrap, stretched over a coffee cup, can support the weight of a truck bearing down on a pencil point’ (New York Times).

Besides being incredibly strong, it is an unimaginably thin material, stiff and yet stretchable, a super conductor of electricity and the best known conductor of heat. And it is chemically inert. Although only discovered a few years ago, it is distinctly possible that graphene could, for example, replace silicon as a building block in computer chips, help build enormous flat screen TVs, be employed in electronics requiring flexibility and in advanced composite materials. (Furthermore, an exciting thought has occurred to me – will this breakthrough result in a use for carbon - that vexing problem?) As you would know, the discovery of graphene recently resulted in a well-deserved Nobel Prize for Physics to the Russian born physicists, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both working at the University of Manchester in the UK.

While the discovery of the material itself is incredible, the process of discovery (to my mind) is far more astounding and should serve as an inspiration to us all. Researchers had given up - a decade or so ago - on isolating graphite into one-carbon atom-thick graphene, surmising that it was a theoretical material that couldn't be created in the real world. Geim and Novoselov (presumably the usual poverty stricken researchers) worked out a simple way of extracting graphene by simply using the 'Scotch tape technique'. This initially involved digging out graphite samples that had been tossed away by other researchers. They then simply folded adhesive tape against the graphite crystals whilst peeling the tape apart repeatedly. In this way, they extracted single sheets of graphene which remained stable at room temperature. And then, with further extensive and painstaking research, they identified the incredible properties of grapheme - which led to their Nobel Prizes.

We tend to assume that we need massive labs, numerous, highly trained researchers and billion dollar budgets to make engineering and scientific research breakthroughs. Quite often it is the opposite. You certainly need a questioning and critical mind, a mind that is sponge-like; to absorb new ideas and approaches and to keenly experiment with new approaches. Most work and experimentation will probably result in disappointing failures, but the trick is to keep persisting.

Despite winning the Nobel Prize and becoming justly famous, Geim and Novoselov continue to work in the lab and are modest about their achievements.

What can we do about it?
• Change your mindset to seek breakthroughs in your (perhaps)mundane engineering day-to-day work
• Forget about spending a fortune in R & D, but harness the modest day-to-day resources you have
• Constantly and persistently look at what may appear, on the surface,  to be silly and test these ideas
• Study, review and understand new approaches to problem solving
• Keep learning and researching
• Remember as that famous engineer, Thomas Edison remarked:

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

How many incredible engineering breakthroughs do you have unwittingly in your hands today?

Thanks to Katie Faber of Chimes of Calvin College, The New York Times and Chemical and Engineering News for interesting reading and references.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Recently a motorist had his finger chopped off so that thieves could steal his expensive car. He was using biometric based fingerprint identification for the car. In applying biosecurity technologies, my concern and experience has been the slowness of the technology in identifying an individual. Not so much how reliable the technology is. But indeed, this reliability issue is perhaps its greatest weakness in terms of identifying all humans uniquely.

Why bother to read further ? Well; security is increasingly a critical element of all engineering installations and biometric security is being increasingly talked about as the panacea to all our problems in this area. Sadly not so, as I will discuss in the following. The myth (at least amongst the gullible public) that biometric means of identifying criminals and terrorists is completely foolproof, is false and has led to billions of dollars misspent in providing security that doesn’t exist.

Authentication of a person normally revolves around one or more of three elements:
1. Something that you know – e.g. a password
2. Something that you possess – e.g. a key or token (perhaps, the most common)
3. Something about you that makes you a ‘unique human being’ – e.g. fingerprints, iris of your eye.

Biometric authentication is based on the third element and is very convenient as there is nothing to forget or lose.

A few immediate problems with biometric security are that screening can be done on innocent people without their knowledge (but this can be useful in identifying criminals); it can invite violence (a motorist had his finger chopped off to steal his expensive car which used fingerprint identification); and we leave our biological features scattered around for others less well meaning, to use (such as fingerprints).

On a historical basis, biometric screening has been around a long time. Handprints were used in cave paintings many millennia ago and fingerprints have been used since the 1800’s.

The approach to biometric screening revolves around two issues: Identification of the person against a database and verification against some measured biological characteristics. The best form of biometric identification is in using the iris of the eye. However this is expensive (and it can be slow). Palm prints are cheap and increasingly popular, but sadly – not the most reliable, especially as evidenced when the FBI incorrectly (supposedly “100% verified’) identified a Muslim US lawyer as responsible for the Madrid train bombings.

Unlike other forms of security assessment, which provide a ‘yes/no’ answer (e.g. a password), biometric solutions only generate probabilistic results where the error in identification can be reduced but can never be entirely eliminated. And the associated sensors and instrumentation have numerous problems with humidity, temperature and varying degrees of lighting as well as aging and calibration. And naturally, the usual problems with bugs in software and interoperability between different security and administrative systems.

So what can you do about this ?

* Ensure that any (security) technology you apply is well researched as to its real level of security
* Read about and research the different security techniques
* Contribute to work in this area by identifying what makes each of us unique in a biological sense and coming up with engineering solutions
* Identify opportunities in providing solutions in this area

At this stage, the experts feel that biometric recognition is in urgent need of further research on what makes us as humans unique and thus needs considerable further work to make it a reliable security technology.

Perhaps Helen Keller is correct about security; when she remarks:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

Thanks to The Economist and Biometric Recognition:Challenges and Opportunities published by the National Research Council in Washington, DC, for a great dissertation on the subject.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

‘The explosive nature of a pipeline,is not far away from the force of a military explosion.’  So remarked Jim Hall, former (American) NTSB chairman. As recently as 2008, a natural gas explosion in Sacramento, killed one and injured two others. And in San Bruno, California on the Sept 2010, a high pressure natural gas line exploded killing seven people and injuring more than 50 others. As an aside, the San Bruno pipeline’s design was such that ‘smart pigs’ couldn’t be used to robotically trawl through the pipeline looking for corrosion and cracks. Over the past five years, over 60 people have been killed and 230 others injured with gas pipeline related ‘episodes’. And this is only in the USA.

Why read this any further ? Well; pipelines are a key part of our infrastructure  these days and impact on all of us as engineering professionals. And create opportunities for us in devising improved safety and delivery mechanisms using superior and more reliable engineering techniques.

The gas utilities report that half of the ‘incidents’ involve others such as builders, cable companies and other utilities who excavate and dig into underground gas pipes. However there are many other incidents relating to pipeline corrosion, operator errors and malfunctioning equipment which are presumably the responsibility of the gas utility. There are admittedly many improvements happening in improving safety. But obviously not enough. Esp. when you consider the above events are happening in one of the most highly developed engineering countries on the planet.

The vast majority of deaths and injuries occur along smaller distribution lines that go to homes and businesses and transmission lines in rural areas. And of course, older pipelines are also considerably higher risk.

Aging of these pipelines would be making this problem considerably worse. I also wonder what impact the so-called global financial crisis is making on pipeline maintenance ? And what is happening in pipelines in odd little third world countries where there is limited expertise (and money) ?

So my suggestions are to:

* Aggressively design, market and sell more devices to service this obvious need for testing gas pipeline integrity from the source of gas through to the final distribution pipelines
* Apply all the new technologies such as Geographical Information Systems and remote inspection technologies to pipelines
* Apply existing technology in other areas of engineering to gas pipelines.
* Research and investigate what is actually happening in gas pipelines throughout the world. Obviously, many disquietening things are happening that the public doesn’t know about.
* Run education and training programs to ensure personnel can easily detect pipeline integrity problems.
* Drive companies to improve maintenance and replacement of pipelines which are of suspect quality.

Surely, as engineering professionals we have moved well beyond relying on compliance agencies to enforce safety and can ignore Dudley Moore’s throw away line (with ‘car’ replaced by ‘pipeline’):

The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues,

It is all quite frustrating - the more you learn about a particular technology, the less you feel you know – esp. in the context of measuring flow rates. The story of engineering, I guess. Flowmeters touch us in every engineering discipline; hence it is definitely worthwhile pondering the latest and numerous developments in flowmeter technology and how you can take advantage of them. Obviously, the main improvements in all flowmeters have been in the electronics, advanced diagnostics, wireless networking and using long-life battery based power .

There is naturally some disagreement about which flow meters are gaining the greatest traction; especially with the rather uncertain economic situation clouding forecasts. But the key flow metering technologies are still differential pressure, ultrasonic, coriolis and vortex. Arguably, turbine and positive displacement technologies are declining.

Differential pressure (dp) – the old workhorse prospers The principle is that pressure drop across a restriction is proportional to the square of the flow rate. Easy to calibrate and thus lower maintenance costs.Improvements range from less straight pipe up and downstream required; advanced diagnostics to pick up items such as lines being blocked and changes to fluid composition. Multivariable dp flowmeters now can calculate mass and energy flow with a single instrument; without the need for multiple devices.

Magnetic flowmetering with no pressure loss

The principle here is based on a conductive fluid passing through the sensor’s magnetic field will generate a voltage proportional to its velocity. Highly accurate and no pressure loss make them sought after. But the fluids have to be conductive; so not good for gas or steam. But a solid performer esp. with additional diagnostics available. Coriolis and oscillating tubes The principle here is that as a fluid moves an oscillating tube vibrating at its resonant frequency, forces are induced which cause the tube to twist. The amount of twist is proportional to the mass flow rate. These are highly accurate devices over a wide turndown and are unaffected by pressure, temp., viscosity and density. There is rapid growth in the use of these flowmeters but they are somewhat more expensive. Recent improvements include ability to measure with entrained gas.

Down the Vortex

When flow passes a bluff body, it generates vortices downstream with a frequency proportional to the flow velocity. Accurate, reliable and very affordable but unable to measure at very low flow rates.

Ultrasonics in two flavours

There are two approaches here: Doppler where the frequency shift is measured in signals reflected off moving particles and transit time where an ultrasonic signal is transmitted with the flow and against the flow; and the difference in transit time measured. Recent developments are for excellent results for gas, low flows and for custody transfer of petroleum fluids.

OK; so are there any other real benefits with these new technologies ?

The use of industrial data communications technologies (HART, Fieldbus, Wireless) to the flow meter allows considerably more information to be transmitted to the user than the traditional 4-20mA technique. And without calibration, testing and various other operations can be conducted on the flowmeter with stopping the operation of collecting flow data (as in the ‘old days’, when the flowmeter had often to be removed from operation).

Typical diagnostics features (which contrary to some old hands’ opinions, can be really useful) are detecting when the sensor has failed or is not operating properly (e.g. reading too high or low; PD orifice plate is eroding); identifying a plugged line (e.g. coating buildup which needs to be removed); eliminating spikes in the measurement (e.g. due to entrained gas, cavitation); composition changes in the fluid and finally, electrical problems such as ground loops and defective power supplies.

Finally, to wrap up with a short discussion on that old chestnut where confusion abounds when talking about flowmeters….

What is the difference between rangeability and turndown ratio of flowmeters?

 Normally both terms are used interchangeably but they are actually subtly different: Turndown ratio is the ratio of the maximum flow to the minimum flow that a flowmeter will measure to a stated accuracy. Rangeability is the ratio of the maximum full scale range to the minimum full scale range of the flowmeter (thanks, David Spitzer). The turndown ratio will be less than the rangeability.

Thanks to Control Engineering, Controlglobal and Spitzer & Boyes for some great reading resources on flow which I have referenced in the above discussion.

Perhaps a trifle tedious to hear in the context of flow meter improvements, but nonetheless true, as Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason remark: Continual improvement is an unending journey.

What are the next major improvements likely in flow meters ?

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Imagine deriving the entire power for a country from hot rocks a few kms below the earth’s surface. Read on about a clever (but very difficult) technology to extract energy from a virtually inexhaustible pollution free source, which as engineering professionals you need to be aware of, as you may be called to comment on.  However, as experts have pointed out, drilling into fractured granite is technically very challenging with no power produced commercially as yet.

Conventional geothermal power (which we are familiar with) relies on naturally occurring pockets of steam or hot water to generate electricity. In Iceland, one quarter of the power generated is from geothermal sources. The more interesting geothermal power plants are situated close to volcanically active parts of the world. Conventional geothermal power plants generate 10.7 GW of power – enough for 53m people worldwide (and provide 93,732 GWhours/year – thanks, Dave Kimble for the original correction). But this note is not about conventional geothermal power but the more interesting (and controversial) EGS ones.

Engineered geothermal systems (EGS) work in parts of the world which are not volcanically active, by drilling many kms down. Water is then injected down to these hot rocks situated kms deep and the hot water is brought back up to the surface, where the heat is extracted to generate electricity. The earth gets hotter the deeper you go. MIT have calculated that if only 2% of the thermal energy, in rocks 3-10kms below the US’s surface is tapped, it could provide all America’s power needs. But at this stage there are very few EGS plants worldwide. Naturally, there are the usual plans to build many plants in Australia, Britain, France and Germany with a predicted 160GW of geothermal capacity installed worldwide by 2050 (with half from EGS).

The great opportunity with geothermal power is minimal carbon dioxide, power is continuous (i.e. not intermittent like solar and wind power) – so good base load provision of power.

The concept of Hot Dry Rock (HDR) geothermal power emerged from Los Alamos National Labs in the USA. As noted earlier, this is effective any where, where hot, dry rocks are drilled and fractured. Cold water is injected in the one well, flows through the cracks in the rock and heats up. The hot water is brought up to the surface in a separate production well where a secondary working fluid with a lower boiling point is heated up. This then spins a turbine for electricity. The original water is re-injected back into the well.

Costs vary depending on the depth of drilling. A typical US geothermal well produces power at $0.10/kWh so quite competitive with traditional sources of energy esp. as there is a $0.02/kWh production tax credit in the USA (at least). However, due to its far greater depth and thus high drilling costs, EGS geothermal costs $0.19kWh. So uneconomic (unless in Germany where the renewable energy subsidy is a huge mindblowing $0.31/KWh).

The biggest challenges for EGS to overcome are the drilling technical challenges and creating the necessary underground reservoirs. An added fear for people are the resulting earthquakes that are caused. Mainly small tremors. But enough to worry people. One Swiss project was recently shut down as it resulted in a 3.4 magnitude earthquake cracking buildings in the region.

What can you do about this ?

• Discuss this technology with your peers
• Investigate how power sources such as this could be applied
• Look at how your area of technology (mining or oil and gas) could be applied to this field

Thanks to The Economist and the Dept of Energy for some interesting reading.

In considering this new pioneering technology (based on rocks), I  like the quote from Ruth Westheimer:

Our way is not soft grass, it's a mountain path with lots of rocks. But it goes upward, forward, toward the sun.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Most people tend to underestimate or misunderstand energy savings – according to the latest research that is. We tend to focus on insignificant savings such as upgrading light bulbs and twiddling thermostats. Most people grasp the broad and basic issues about energy savings; but they are decidedly unsure about the details, especially when estimating. Apparently participants in the research underestimated both energy use and savings by almost a factor of 3. They also tended to grossly underestimate the massive energy savings that could come from tweaking larger machines such as heaters and clothes dryers. Most people tend to focus on small savings such as switching off lights and ignored (as a typical example) the greater savings from switching their washing machines from hot to warm settings which saves 4kWh for each load of laundry.

It would appear that human psychology causes us to adopt a familiar yardstick (such as the familiar electric light bulb) and then to use this as a benchmark to make predictions. The estimates of savings then tend to cluster around this yard stick (psychologists call this process ‘anchoring’). As a result we tend to grossly underestimate the savings that could be made. Naturally, if the average person used a larger yardstick (beyond the light bulb) the problem may be less pervasive. And if we are good at maths (or arithmetic), we are likely to have a considerably lower level of error.

Based on this, there is probably a case for idiot proof energy saving devices that indicate exactly how much energy we consume.

What can be done?

• Expect people with a limited background in maths to underestimate energy savings.
• Encourage people to focus on the opportunities to squeeze tiny percentage savings from larger machines, resulting in significant savings, rather than focusing on the smaller items and smaller savings.
• Guard against the ‘anchoring effect” when estimating - practiced unintentionally either by yourself or others.
• Naturally, I am not knocking looking at the small things when undertaking energy savings, but merely pointing out the need to also focus on (often quite simply) the ‘bigger fruit’.

Thanks to the National Academy of Sciences (and the Economist) for an interesting piece of research.

Never overestimate what others do. As Cory Doctorow said “Engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff.”

Regards

Steve

Dear Colleagues

In contrast to the well defined structures of engineering, it never ceases to fascinate me how the topsy-turvy way business actually works. In many cases, defying the laws of logic (and as the old saying goes: rewarding the guilty and punishing the innocent).

There are six important issues to always bear in mind to extract maximum value from the business world whilst working in engineering.

Customers are not always obvious. Customers are not only the external guys who buy your company’s products or services. A customer is your immediate supervisor and their bosses, and other departments to whom you deliver work. These often require far more attention and care than the external customer. Understanding their real requirements is an art form which you have to work hard on. And communicating all the time with them esp. on when you can deliver, and the real costs they will incur is fiendishly important.

Know thy supplier. External vendors that provide the bits and pieces that make your business tick are critical to your long term success. Watch out for the cheapest bidders. They are either providing rubbish or there are some hidden additional extras that are going to cost you later on. Care should be taken with suppliers who provide excessive favours – there may be a hidden cost later. And sadly, in today’s world, company reputations aren’t worth much – companies are changing so much and when key employees leave, this can result in a massive changes overnight.

Your colleagues. Get to know who does the real work in your company and who actually performs and delivers the results. It is often the quiet secretary hidden behind the scenes who is managing the CEO and company.

Lawyers. Shakespeare was somewhat harsh in Henry VI in saying: ‘The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers’. Engineers have to learn how lawyers think and prosper in today’s world. Lawyers operate amorally (not immorally). ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ are defined by which side they represent. They will very rarely give a hard ‘yes’ or ‘no’ opinion but focus on advice; not running a business. The optimum approach for you is to have an impeccable understanding of the law, research the best way of doing something and then merely ask the lawyer to critique your proposal for advice on how to implement a particular course of action legally. Throughout, there is absolutely no substitute for your own judgment.

You never know how contracts will turn out. An unbelievable amount of time is spent negotiating and putting contracts together. And it is very difficult to anticipate what happens when things go wrong or turn out differently. I have found to my cost, over the years, that the longer one spends on haggling (seemingly forever) over the details of a contract (the ‘what if’ scenarios); the less likely you are going to have a successful long term relationship. So, by all means, put the framework of an agreement in writing; but above all – do business with people you trust and who perform.

Only the paranoid survive in business. This famous quote is from a famous engineer (Andrew Grove – ex-CEO of Intel). Change is a constant factor in business life (new products and services are the lifeblood of any enterprise) and a dynamic (perhaps painfully) always-changing business environment is something you have to embrace and ensure your engineering systems cope with.
 
As Tom Robbins remarked: ‘Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business’.

Thanks to Gordon Geiger, one of the old hand engineering CEOs, for an interesting article in the IEEE, which I have modified extensively.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleague

Although I can hear a few of you muttering... 'obviously a jack of all trades and master of none'; one of  my passions is the study of engineering professionals working and collaborating remotely especially in remote configuration and testing of industrial automation systems. The rapid growth in broadband, the need to reduce travel and accommodation costs as well as reduce green house gases (from travel), makes this a very relevant topic.

As the ITU remark; “It’s good to collaborate remotely without the need to physically travel. Increase productivity, save time and money while reducing your company’s carbon footprint.”

There is a growing demand for remote configuration and testing of systems often performed by teams of engineers collaborating virtually from remote locations. Admittedly, there are technical challenges of remote control and configuration on a real-time basis and there is a heightened risk of security breaches with catastrophic consequences. However the field of remote collaboration and configuration is growing fast.

As engineering professionals we tend to work in teams. There is a new family of tools to assist us in communication, collaboration and co-ordination; without the requirement for physical travel.

The market of remote collaboration can be segmented by price and bandwidth requirements and ranges from (at the low end of bandwidth) email / instant messaging / phone calls / audio conferencing / web-casting / web conferencing / video conferencing and the big one – Telepresence. Web conferencing is a tool that offers particularly useful features at an affordable cost.

Remote collaboration is not only just about technology but has three main functionalities:

• Communication – the ability to exchange information between participants
• Co-ordination – the ability to coordinate tasks among the geographically scattered team
• Collaboration – the ability to achieve team goals.

Typical tools range from Acrobat Connect, Gotomeeting, Livemeeting, Electromeet and webex. These allow typical web conferencing at an affordable cost. The main methods of delivery of web conferencing are typically using slides, audio, text chat, video streaming, use of a whiteboard, sharing of programs, file transfers and web touring.

In addition, the feature of simultaneously performing remote configuration and testing of a remote site is an added benefit in some of them and this is the area that really interests me with our research and work.

The benefits of collaboration and testing include:

• Convenience
• Easy to use
• Expertise available to more sites
• Higher availability of equipment
• Access to specialized equipment
• No geolgraphical barriers
• Minimization of travel and accommodation costs – lower greenhouse gases
• Considerably lower costs

How can you take advantage of these tools?

1. Think seriously about using remote collaboration, testing and configuration for your next project
2. If you have access to broadband on your remote sites, this makes the decision easier
3. Your younger staff would be familiar and comfortable with these tools
4. Pay attention to security of your connections
5. Training is required to ensure everyone is skilled at using these tools

Naturally, not everyone is not going to ‘go 100%’ to remote collaboration. Agreements and contracts often need personal touch. Informal discussions during tea breaks are difficult to replicate through the sometimes clinical internet. And naturally, critical tests and interfacing to equipment where an expert is required physically on the spot are still essential. And as we all know, in many locations internet connections are not possible, impossibly slow or tenuous.

On the topic of remote control, John Alejandro King made the joking remark which could be one day true:

If you're not scared or angry at the thought of a human brain being controlled remotely, then it could be this prototype of mine is finally starting to work.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

As you know, with the recent release of the various Apple iPhones and iPads; innovation tuned into the market is highly prized and rewarded. Rupert Murdoch, the news media magnate, predicts that tens of millions of iPads will be sold over the next few years. He remarked about the Apple CEO, Jobs: ‘He's got such incredible focus. He's got such power inspiring the people around him who work for him. And, you know, it's -- it's a highly, highly disciplined company... and it makes beautiful products.’ In essence, I believe, it’s all about leadership and innovation strongly focussed on the marketplace.

Certainly, a rock bottom price doesn’t play a huge part in the success of these products, and Jobs will have the horde of lower cost imitators pouring in shortly. He will have to keep ahead of the pack. And sure, he has had some problems with the antennas. But this is the stuff of business. He has persevered and succeeded (today).

Innovation is not the great saviour

All the so-called experts in western countries keep on banging on about innovation being the saviour for the western world against the competition from the low cost Asian wages countries. Innovation is critical to long term success, but only when backed with manufacturing. But therein lies the dilemma.

Many say that as we can’t compete in any other way with low cost countries, we have to simply focus on selling our innovation and R & D. Typically it is said that America, Canada, Europe, Australia and NZ, will do the R & D and the rest of the world (typically China and India) will do the dull work of simply making things. Cheap labour is supposedly the main reason why manufacturing will continue to move to the China, Vietnam and India.

But as Ralph Gomory (of the IEEE) points out, cheap labour doesn’t quite explain why Japan and Germany have such vibrant car manufacturing industries. Or why semiconductors, which require such an incredible amount of R & D and are so highly automated, are mainly made in Asia. The theory that manufacturing in the western world is doomed and will go to low wage countries is a flawed one.

A few awkward truths

We have an additional awkward truth to confront. If we don’t make something or sell a service in sufficient quantities we have to import and pay for it out of borrowings. As we all know, these loans have to be eventually paid back. No free lunch here. Thus providing only innovation and R&D is simply just not enough to pay the bills.

Countries such as China are definitely not only interested in pursuing low cost wages and products or services. They are slowly moving up the food chain into producing higher quality and far more innovative based goods and services. So believe me – competition is not only going to be in traditional manufacturing but also in innovation and R & D.

I also see a considerable amount of money wasted on R & D on projects which are simply not commercially oriented or simply a bureaucratic waste of time creating “jobs for the boys and girls.”

Wage costs going up

There are interesting signs of wage costs going up strongly in China. On an anecdotal front, one of my more entrepreneurial buddies (who peddles camera accessories) found to his horror that his Chinese manufacturer had been making them at a loss for the past two years and had to raise prices by a few hundred percent to stay in business. The wage plunge is not only downwards. Eventually, workers are going to want to be paid reasonable wages and things will thus be more competitive. This will happen in the distant future, but it is happening.

What must we do?

• Keep innovating and doing R & D as intensively as possible to give your products and services that incredible edge.
• Look at ways to produce and manufacture innovatively and cost effectively.
• Form partnerships with other firms around the world to sell products and services.
• Show outstanding leadership to your people and colleagues in creating outstanding innovative products which fulfil a real customer need.
• Keep firmly focussed on the bottom line in terms of profitable products and services.

Lee Iacocca remarked about the need for persistence and the difficulty of achieving success particularly in the manufacturing areas:

There ain't no free lunches in this country. And don't go spending your whole life commiserating that you got raw deals. You've got to say, 'I think that if I keep working at this and want it bad enough I can have it.'

Thanks to Ralph Gomory of the IEEE for his very interesting note on the subject.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Remember those noisy motorbikes with plumes of smoke pouring behind them as they tore down the street? I grew up with them and aspired for one, although in some respects they were death-traps for teenagers. You don’t see many two-stroke engines on the road today; they have survived in lawnmowers, chainsaws and hedge-trimmers. Cheap, light and compact makes for a good garden appliance.

A two-stroke engine applies the KISS (Keep it simple Stupid) principle with panache, so called as it had two strokes per cycle (instead of the standard four for the engine which powers our cars); it cost less than half as much to make, is far lighter and puts out far more power per revolution (firing once rather than every other revolution).

The two stroke engine performs the same four separate processes as a four-stroke (‘suck’, ‘squeeze’, ‘bang’ and ‘blow’). But it ensures the exhaust stroke (‘blow’) and the induction stroke (‘suck’) happen simultaneously when the piston is travelling through the bottom half of the cylinder. The other two strokes – compression (‘squeeze’) and combustion (‘bang’) are carried out sequentially while the piston is in the cylinder’s upper half.

Such simplicity does have a price. The fact that the inlet and outlet ports are open simultaneously means getting rid of burned gases before fresh fuel is admitted is not overly effective, meaning poor fuel economy. But the killer stroke (as it were) is its total loss lubrication system. Lubricant is pre-mixed with fuel and because oil combusts less than petrol, as much as a third escapes into the atmosphere as unburned hydrocarbons and soot. However, these two reasons are not the only reason for the two-strokes disappearance. Motorbike makers simply wanted to focus on the more profitable four-stroke models.

Two-strokes are now back in fashion. The pilotless planes such as the Predator and Reaper in Iraq and Afghanistan are extraordinarily successful examples ranging in size from 10cc to 200cc. Aircooled and running on petrol, diesel, avgas or jet-fuel.

On the road; two potentially big comebacks

The Omnivore engine (produced by Lotus Engineering) provides for direct injection and variable compression. This operates like a diesel using heat from the compressed gases to ignite the mixture (rather than with spark plugs) running on a range of fuels with high efficiency and low emissions of carbon monoxide. This provides superb competition for four stroke petrol engines which suffer from significant throttling losses when they are driven at less than flat out. Overall efficiency of a four-stroke car when muddling along the road at half throttle is typically 17% rather than 30% (at full throttle).

The Opposed Piston Opposed Cylinder (OPOC) developed by EcoMotors, where the mixture (diesel or petrol) is compressed between two pistons moving in opposite directions (thus half the distance to travel), allowing twice the rotation speed as an engine with fixed cylinder heads and providing 30% better fuel economy than a conventional four-stroke. Don Runkle (CEO) remarked (arrogantly or supremely confidently?): ‘The OPOC, is cheaper, better, simpler, stronger, lighter and cleaner than any other power generating technology now or in the foreseeable future’.

We may find these engines end up giving four strokes and indeed, electric cars, considerable competition in the next decade.

Thanks to The Economist for references.

As E.F. Schumacher noted:

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

One thing that we as engineering professionals tend to shy away from, is asking for a raise or an increase in fees for services we deliver to clients. Engineers and technicians tend to enjoy and focus on the engineering and technical issues and generally get short changed on their fees and salaries. We get enormous satisfaction from doing technical things but contemplating our fee or hourly rate is often considered demeaning and unprofessional (and indeed for most of us, it can be somewhat boring).
However, there does come a time when you need to consider the fact that you may be underpaid. Even in tough times, you may be making an incredible contribution to your company’s success or providing a client with some incredible value in terms of service. John Hoschette has written about this in his book (Wiley IEEE Press book, ‘The Engineer's Career Guide’). He makes a few suggestions (which I have modified, as is my penchant):

* Research and build your  case
* Make your presentation and ask for the raise
* Handle objections
* Plan for the future

Research and build your case

First of all, if you are simply asking for a raise because you need money to pay bills or want to go on a holiday or buy a new boat, you are asking for the wrong reasons. Similarly, if someone else in your group is being paid more, this doesn’t really wash either, as they may have demonstrated more experience or productivity. It is a manager’s worse nightmare to give someone a raise based on the wrong reasons, as this sets up a precedent and results in an avalanche of claims for increases from everyone. The main reason for being paid more has to be your consistently excellent performance; where you have demonstrated outstanding productivity or created a new winning product or service which the company has clearly made money from over a year or at least many months.

You should certainly research what others in your industry and company are being paid; many web sites offer salary comparison tools today. Build a clear case for outstanding performance, based on real evidence. Document these cost savings, productivity improvements, new products and services created which have resulted in great increases in revenue, outstanding sales results, extra hours you have put in or new initiatives you have taken. Ensure you understand your company policy and procedures as far as raises are concerned. Calculate your raise on simple percentages which are reasonable; if you try and ask for something unreasonable or you anticipate some haggling; you will be perceived to be unprofessional and lose leverage. Do not p ropose or discuss your raise by email or phone. Try and ensure it is always done in a peaceful face-to-face setting with your boss or client.

Make your presentation and ask for the raise

Explain to your boss what the meeting is about and plan it for a few days in advance. Don’t surprise him or her by ‘cutting to the chase’ and asking him or her quickly before a critical stressful meeting on some engineering project. Rehearse your strategy carefully and present it in a professional, calm and reasoned manner at the right time when your boss or client are in a receptive mood (not when they are furiously busy sorting out some disaster). Provide clear objective evidence for the raise or fee increase. When presenting, do not present an ultimatum: ‘Either you pay this increase or I quit’. Sadly, these days managers often call your bluff and select the ‘quit’ option, even though the company may lose significantly from the loss of an outstanding employee

Handle objections

Most assuredly you will encounter objections and you have to deal with these in a professional and calm manner where you help your boss along in terrain he may be unfamiliar with. Restate your reasons for the raise and ensure you are selling the benefits. Your boss (or client) may need help in selling this to upper management and here you have to assist him with a strategy. If in the worst case scenario it is simply the wrong time, get an agreement for a more propitious time to consider the raise; do not get emotional or angry in discussing the issues. Stay professional and balanced at all times. Innovatively consider other options for a salary or fee increase such as extra vacation days off, your kids getting vacation work at the firm, use of the company equipment and vacation home or boat or whatever. If it is a client that you are talking to about a fee raise, she could promote your services to other of her peers or consider a bonus at the end of the project.

Plan for the future

If things haven’t gone to plan; don’t be unprofessional, withhold your services and work fewer hours. Or withhold your talents from certain key tasks. Keep delivering an outstanding service and you will be recognized. Someone else may recognize you and head hunt you to another company department or indeed company.

As professionals, remember that your enjoyment of your day-to-day work as an engineering professional is probably more important than anything else: As Dan Seligman wryly remarks:
A raise is like a martini: it elevates the spirit, but only temporarily.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Many of us tend to regard the developing (poorer) world as a great market for our so-called innovative products from the west. Let’s face it - with the inevitable doomsday talk of a double dip recession, there is a heightened twitchiness around the world at present, so any new market in which to sell our services and products is welcome. However, there is a rapidly developing area where new products are being designed and built in the developing (or poorer) world; this process is sometimes referred to as ‘reverse innovation’. Examples range from the $2500 Tata Nano car, the $70 portable refrigerator and the $1000 handheld electrocardiogram (EKG) device – all developed in the developing world. These products are now being marketed into other western countries.

See the end of this article to download a useful 22 p. chapter on the fundamentals of Electrical Power Distribution.

Reverse Engineering Innovation

Perhaps a generalisation, but often engineers from western countries tend to focus on improving existing products (which are perhaps lower risk) rather than thinking of low cost solutions to new problems. In addition, designing and creating new products is an expensive process; no-one tends to focus on high return products oriented towards a western market.

The process of reverse innovation is the alternative approach of developing low cost innovative products in the developing world. This is naturally of tremendous interest to the developing world. Engineering professionals here (in the developing world) are actively working on innovative products for their markets and also to launch these into the western world.

Oddly enough, inadequate infrastructure in the developing world (eg. the telecommunications fixed line system) is often an opportunity to provide alternative lower cost solutions (such as wireless). In the western world, this may actually be a hindrance to promoting new technologies as one has to convince existing users to change. As we all know, this is often extraordinarily hard.

So where do we go from here?

• Talk to your clients and marketing department about innovative new solutions which are suited to the developing world rather than your traditional western world markets.
• Consider ways of re-designing your products to fit needs in the developing world which are both innovative and low cost.
• Look for partners in the developing world to develop new innovative products suitable initially for these markets and then for the western world.

Thanks to John Platt of the IEEE for a great article and Prof. Vijay Govindarajan for coining the term ‘reverse innovation’.

Yours in engineering learning,

Steve

Dear Colleagues

When designing or constructing a product, we specify the requirements (and design features) in copious detail. But one set of items we tend to leave out are the unwanted requirements (or the do not do’s). This comment probably sounds odd (demented ?). However, we tend to focus on the positives in a design or in constructing or commissioning equipment. If you think of the recent Toyota recall, with the accelerator pedal operation which was not controllable, perhaps if the conceptual designers had included a note indicating items that cannot be permitted under any circumstances, things may have ended somewhat better. I would argue that in the earlier years in our profession (the 1800’s), we were quickly made aware of negative design effects as we were not that familiar with even obvious weaknesses in a design. One only needs to think of steam boilers, where explosions occurred with horrible regularity. As a result design improvements were introduced resulting in codes and standards for boiler specification and construction, and failures in this area dropped dramatically. However, the complexity of modern systems (esp. the computer-human interface area) makes picking up these type of problems considerably more difficult.

The other associated challenge is that we don’t appear to learn from our past mistakes and thus don’t remember them in putting a design specification together, again focussing on the positive attributes (rather than the do not do’s). Or we do know about past mistakes but believe we can circumvent or avoid the problems due to some successes in the past; hence do not worry about them in the specification. Or we are not entirely familiar with the real reasons for past failures so ignore the issue. One theory reckons that disasters in large systems occur with regular cyclical monotony. For example, one study revealed a 30-year gap between major bridge disasters in the USA. The suggestion was that this is perhaps due to a communication gap between one generation of engineers and the next. A provocative statement or not ?

So whilst focussing on the can-do aspects of your next design or construction task, take a moment to  ponder and itemise the must-not-do’s under any circumstances. You won’t be popular with your boss but you may do the general public a great service and create a far safer and more functional design.

As a mild example of above: If only the guys who sold me the 30 x variable speed drives had warned me in their installation specification that the capacitors can easily fail and any possible sources of high voltage spikes would blow the capacitors (of all of them). In talking to others since then, I have come to realize that the failure of capacitors in variable speed drives have been a source of great pain for many others as well. 

Thanks to the IEEE for an interesting set of articles on the topic.

As far as humans making mistakes, Albert Einstein, has a good comment:

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

We’ve all been watching the BP Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the explosion and collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. And we all have a response. There are those who are horrified about the environmental catastrophe, others who wonder about the technology and engineering expertise necessary at those depths and obviously there are those who consider the inevitable safety issues. There will even be those who are wondering about the future impact on the offshore oil and gas industry. At the end of this newsletter, you will find a complimentary 15 page write-up on Risk Management, which relates to this topic.

What actually happened and what is BP doing about it?

In essence, the action of the oil leakage is happening a mile under the ocean. At this level we are looking at a huge 150 atmospheres of pressure which dramatically changes the standard ways we operate.

For example a week or so ago, icy methane hydrates formed when natural gas got mixed up with the freezing water at those high pressures. This clogged the pipes and lifted a 125 tonne coffer dam (lowered over the leak) right off the sea bed. Something not anticipated.

Oil is actually leaking through two points – one at each end of the well’s riser pipe (at its connection to the blowout preventer - sitting on top of the actual oil well, and at the end of the riser where it was connected to the ill fated oil platform). The one end of the riser pipe (originally going up to the platform) is lying on the sea bed. A clever insertion device here is currently sucking up the oil (at the rate of 2000 barrels per day) from the end of the riser pipe (where it is located on the sea bed). The debate now is how much oil is leaking into the Gulf. Estimates vary from 5000 barrels per day (an angry, but optimistic US government estimate, perhaps) to 50,000 barrels per day (something a well could theoretically produce). It is probably something in between these extremes.

The approach to block the flow with drilling mud (water and clay minerals) hasn’t worked. The next trick after this was supposed to be a “junk shot” with rubber and plastic goodies to gum things up in the blow out preventer; but this has seemingly been discarded after the drilling mud tactic failed. The third trick is putting a new blowout preventer on top of the old one (this current strategy will unfold over the next few days). But it means that the existing riser needs to be chopped off (this will result in the loss of the current siphon -through the insertion device to the riser - which is bringing some oil up to a barge). So the risks are high here; as failure will mean another 2000 barrels of oil per day will leak out.

Relief wells are also being drilled to get to the point 4000 m below the sea bed. Here they will intersect with the existing wells and a deadweight of drilling fluid pumped down to stop the flow. This, however, still has a long way to go…although the technical risks are perhaps lower.

The other big issue with the operation is the spraying of chemical dispersants. They break up the oil into smaller droplets which disperse widely and are hopefully broken down by bacteria. Unfortunately, the dispersants used are toxic so whilst this is working to an extent, it conveys mixed blessings.

The other rather grim prediction is that a considerable amount of the oil flowing into the Gulf will create an underwater death zone and an environmental catastrophe for sea creatures.

The million dollar question on my mind is of course: what particular approach is going to work? There is some optimism about placing a new blow out preventer on top of the current one. We will know in the next few days.

So what can we gain from this nightmare?

Oil is definitely going to be in increasingly short supply in the years to come. Thus the requirement to operate at these extreme depths and conditions is steadily growing in intensity. This presents an incredible opportunity to go where no one has gone before - to tailor one’s current services and goods to servicing an ‘extreme environment with safety and security. Extreme risks, but with extreme rewards.

• Well, there is no doubt operating at these sort of depths is opening up all sorts of engineering opportunities for all of us – so investigate how your current skills and services can be aligned with these activities – from subsea operations to subsea mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering.
• We need more engineering research into what happens at these depths. From engineering to how people work effectively with remote robots and subs
• Skill yourself up in these areas as this is a breaking technological area where there will be a serious shortage of skills
• This sort of disaster impact on a company can break it; hence there is increased urgency to manage risk more effectively – imperative in everything we do with our current activities.
• Environmental issues are going to become more critical than ever before. The Americans are certainly not going to let anyone drill freely. Other countries will be re-examining their protocols and processes too.
• The bureaucratic approval processes are going to become even more convoluted. Dealing with this effectively is another important skill set to gain.

With these disasters and pioneering endeavours, we have to realize that we are stretching our engineering to the limits - well outside of our comfort zones and this quote illustrates this point:

A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are built for (John A. Shedd).

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear colleagues

Andy Grove, the innovative and hard driving ex-CEO of the business behemoth Intel, and a famous chemical engineer, made the remark ‘Only the paranoid survive in business’ many years ago when referring to how he grew Intel so vigorously (and profitably) over many decades; despite dealing with enormous technical change, vigorous competition and rapid growth.

When you look around you at the carcasses of engineering companies, one can clearly see that technical change can be harsh on what initially appears to be an unbeatable business proposition. From Kodak, Polaroid, DEC, Atari and a myriad of other computer, technology and engineering companies.

One can see companies such as the famous American telephone company AT&T (worth $123 billion) tussling with these issues now. Currently, it has exclusive rights to provide wireless services in America for Apple’s iPhone and iPad and this is perhaps masking some underlying potential problems. At the core of AT&T’s business - consumers are dropping landlines in droves and wireless revenue growth is plateauing now that everyone has mobile (cell) phones. There is also fierce competition from cable companies and small firms offering pre-paid mobile deals at far lower prices (acting like a flesh eating virus spreading over the body of the telecoms companies’ bodies, as one consultant calls them)

As a result, one has to be vigilant (paranoid?) and constantly looking to widen your company’s offerings. And indeed, constantly making real improvements to one’s product (or services). If you don’t; you are out of business. And by business, I don’t only mean a business but you in selling your personal engineering skills.

Suggestions here include:

• Constantly benchmark your engineering services and products against others in the market
• Ensure your clients are getting real value
• Constantly question whether there are better and simpler ways of engineering your products and services
• Look to increase your portfolio of skills and services
• Constantly research and implement improvements and improve your know-how and skills
• Keep a view of the bigger picture and avoid engineering for engineering’s sake
• Don’t be put off by initial resistance by customers to your great new products which definitely add value
• Avoid the insanity of doing the same thing again and again if it is not working

As William Burroughs remarked: A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues,

It seems, on reflection, that over time I have had the dubious honour of travelling to ‘out of the way’ places. Two weeks ago, I participated in an Engineering Roadshow where we presented short lectures to engineering professionals in various out-of-city locations. A range of exhibitors promoted their wares alongside us. It is always particularly enjoyable meeting those of you who come along. The tricky challenge on these excursions seems always to be tangled up in the logistics - arriving at the designated hotel at 11.30 at night and allocated - by the disinterested hotel receptionist - a room to share (fortunately not a bed).

Despite this and inevitably, I always learn more from the highly interactive guys attending the presentations, than they do from me. I try hard to be a jack of all trades and remain at the technical forefront of all these different subjects, but it can be quite challenging. Still it is good fun and I gain enormously from the experience.

The following contains a summary of the wisdom I gained (or had reinforced) from the wonderful audience on this last Roadshow:

Troubleshooting Industrial Ethernet:

The real Ethernet networking problem is often completely different to that which is reported to you by the operators. It is essential, therefore, to ensure that you identify the exact issue and then test this to verify your solution.

If you are installing Ethernet in a grimy plant ensure it is real industrial strength. Do not tolerate RJ-45 connectors and wimpy commercial products in a sweaty, hot, vibrating industrial plant. (These may pass if you are installing your Ethernet kit in a nice clean, air conditioned environment)

The Nuts and Bolts of Smart Instrumentation Standards:

Do not worry excessively about the best Fieldbus standard. It is more important to ensure you use a standard which is supported by your top support vendor (whether it be: Foundation Fieldbus, Profibus, DeviceNet, etc). Another important issue is to have an easy connection into Ethernet through a proven gateway. And high quality cabling and installation practice is still imperative.

Troubleshooting Variable Speed Drives:

Watch out for harmonics and ensure good screening practice with your comms cables.

Ensure you de-rate for high temperatures (and altitude).
Many commented that the number of parameters (speed, current, acceleration times and other settings) available today can be daunting. But learning to work with a few key ones is deemed adequate.

Avoid overfluxing your motor.

Industrial Wireless Networks:

These are slowly creeping in everywhere and can easily be used in hazardous areas. The use of batteries with 7 years life, however, means that you won’t be able to poll them too often for data (once a minute perhaps).

Safety Instrumentation including Safety Integrity Levels (SILs):

SILs defines the degree of confidence placed in the ability of a system to provide functional safety - ranging from 1 (low) to 4 (very high). These are used everywhere today and are worthwhile understanding.

Surely, Jack London’s comment is true of engineering, especially when trying out new concepts:

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
   
Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

As we all know there is a burgeoning environmental catastrophe occurring in the Gulf of Mexico. BP’s CEO has announced that a massive containment dome (also known as a cofferdam) will be dropped through 5000 feet of water to cover the oil leak and funnel the oil to the surface - something that has never been done before, let alone at these depths.

Engineering professionals always rise to the occasion - coming up with ingenious solutions to engineering problems (whether they always solve the crises is another issue). Furthermore, these solutions do much, ultimately, to make the processes, safer, more efficient and often more economical. We can learn so much and gain incredible experience from these endeavours too - making us much better engineers and technicians.

I am not suggesting that problems, and indeed disasters, are a good thing. But if the approach to the solution is constructive and thoughtful, an amazingly sustainable and positive outcome can be achieved - one of the ways in which engineering improves the world around us. In other words, a particularly elegant solution to an engineering problem is akin to the legendary phoenix bird arising from the ashes.

When I reflect on the array of engineering problems which has confronted me over the years I always think of the solutions in brackets – some less memorable than  others I must confess:
• An enormous mining crusher which failed due to a lack of oil - (replace all trip circuits with triple back up and audit the rest of the plant to identify and fix similar problems).
• Data communication links which failed intermittently crashing an entire plant - (replace copper with fibre).
• A Programmable Logic Controller dropping out occasionally - (audit and fix poor earthing system).
• Cavitation problems in pumps - (reroute and change piping)
• Process control tuning problems - (fix instrumentation)
• Denial of service attack on our new VoIP telephone system - (improve firewall)
• PLC Ethernet card failure - (provide training in configuring MAC and IP addresses and ensure solution is detailed next to server).

How does one tackle engineering problems? I have always admired the Kepner-Tregoe approach to problem solving. One grizzled engineer remarked to me, recently, “You don’t have to go on the training to learn this, just buy a $20 book, read it a few times, ask lots of questions and practice the techniques”. In a nutshell:

Define the problem.

Keep asking “Why?” - Typically up to 5 times, to ensure you have a clear handle on the specific problem.

Describe the problem

Use these four questions to help you pin down a description of the problem:
• What it happening?
• Where does it occur?
• When does it occur?
• To what extent does it occur?

Establish possible causes

You should rely on the tried and tested question here - What has changed since it worked? Check all possible changes – no matter how trivial or inconsequential they may seem.

Test the most probable cause

List the causes and examine each one objectively.

Verify the true cause

Compare the possible root causes against the problem description. Thereafter consider solutions which may prevent its reoccurrence. Once the immediate problem is solved and the “heat is off” we tend to relax. In my opinion, however, it is critical to look at fixing the problem in all possible, or similar, areas to ensure the solutions are permanent.

Solving business problems? - Considerably more challenging and painful. They are often more unpalatable, for example the viability of a business unit - has the show moved on? For me, the past year has been tough, with these and similar questions mulled over from time to time, but we are still here providing engineering education and training.

I absolutely believe in this assertion by John W. Gardner:

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

The main reason, for writing this newsletter is to inform and educate (both you and me, I might add) and hopefully to ensure that you get value from our newsletters (and naturally open them !).

The one topic, which is still very “hot” is of course Arc Flash protection where we recently ran a well attended and actively debated conference. Evgeniy Mitev and Trung Nguyen (both of Rio) stated that: “An arc flash is the plasma cloud that develops during and following an electrical fault, whereby the insulating properties of air are overcome through rapid ionisation. Most arc power is delivered to, and stored in, the plasma cloud as high-temperature plasma enthalpy. It is characterised by temperatures in excess of 15,000 °C, a cocktail of superheated toxic gases and airborne molten metal from melted conductor and steel, released by the components within an electrical assembly under fault.

As a result of the rapid energy release, a pressure wave also develops of such magnitude such that if contained, may lead to switchboard
structural failure and propel missiles such as panel doors. In the absence of
appropriate pressure relief, arc flash incidents have been known to collapse
entire substation buildings.”

Sesha Prasad (Welcon Technologies) noted the prompt to action here:
“By about 1994, NFPA (in the USA) statistics showed the alarming nature of arc flash hazard. As per the statistics, there were about 1 to 2 fatalities per day in the U.S. in electrical installations. However, there were more than 5 serious burn injuries per day which required extensive burn treatment and skin grafts. These statistics motivated NFPA to initiate research with regard to calculation of incident heat energy due to an arc flash and specifying appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to provide arc flash protection.”

There is still considerable ongoing work in research in this area due to disagreement on the current conclusions of the research.

And as my good colleague, Peter Willis (of DIgSILENT Pacific) stated so succinctly in terms of arc flash hazards:

“It can be assumed that all asset owners and operators of electrical infrastructure would want to inform and protect their electrical workers against the many hazards of arc faults including.
•Electric shock.
•Burns Trauma from arc plasma, radiated heat, molten metal.
•Physical Trauma from flying debris and pressure waves.
•Respiratory Trauma from toxic gases.

In order to manage these hazards, they need to be understood by workers so the
appropriate action and countermeasures can be applied.”

Please find at the following link, a download on Arc Flash Protection (please forgive occasional reference to inches and pounds – our next iteration will have both metric and fps).

As engineering professionals, it is our duty to provide suitable protection against industrial hazards. As Sir Francis Bacon remarked 500 years ago:"Man seeketh in society comfort, use and protection."

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

At the end of this note, there are three complimentary chapters for you to download. They are from our forthcoming bridging course on Engineering Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry.

We all know that no one is indispensable – companies and people come and go. Even the owner or ‘boss’ of a business is often a fragile commodity.  Bearing this in mind you could do the usual and simply go to work and truck along - go with the flow.  On the other hand, you could go a step further and drive yourself and your organisation with some great ideas, strategies and practice. This will result in a jump in your engineering career and you will derive enormous satisfaction from being proactive.

Here are a few suggestions:

1.  Make sure you are The Expert on an engineering or technology topic. Pick a “hot useful” topic, learn it inside out and use this know-how to contribute to your firm and clients. Become well known as the local and indispensable expert who takes delight in assisting and educating everyone on this difficult topic - both in your organisation and to your clients. For example, if you are working with an industrial data communications system and are able to knowledgeably troubleshoot protocol packets with Wireshark (a freely available utility) you have a unique and enviable skill. Or if you are able to diagnose and rectify problems with electrical harmonics on an oil and gas platform you will be looked upon as the expert.

2. Write well and document what you do in simple English. Most engineering professionals hate writing and documenting things. Someone technical with this skill, therefore, quickly becomes well known and respected. Supplementing your text with clear drawings and diagrams and a neatly-structured spreadsheet listing I/O addresses and interface details would be the piece de resistance.

3. Add communication skills to your expertise. Being able to communicate simply and effectively (avoiding jargon) is always highly regarded. Make opportunities to attend professional development classes that focus on critical thinking and presentation skills or join a group like Toastmasters International which will give you practice.

4. Watch out for changes in your field of endeavour. Change is guaranteed and not always welcome - especially when you have spent your career investing in a particular skill.  For example, a decade before, you had to know about the RS-232E serial communication standard and you were able to wield a soldering iron with some panache. This is mostly obsolete now and instead you need to know all about Gigabit Ethernet and TCP/IP addressing. So watch for changes, be prepared to change and where possible avoid backing a career dead end.

5. Hitch a lift with a magic carpet rider. There are employees going places in an organisation that can be fairly easily identified. They show clear signs of leadership with their enthusiasm, innovative thinking and involvement in pioneering and ultimately productive projects. Endeavouring to work in their departments is far more intelligent than working for and with dead-end colleagues and managers – those who tend to be cynical, negative and disappointed with the firms they work for and with their own careers.

6. Discuss your career with your manager. Put a plan together of where you want to go with your career over a 6 to 12 month period. In the plan consider; type of work and experience, progress and a forecast, education or professional development and naturally salary. Don’t haggle with your manager on salaries, however, and play your firm off against a job offer from another firm - you are likely to be labelled mercenary and untrustworthy. Keep an eye on salaries, though, with comparable jobs in the market and ensure your management is aware of any discrepancies. In tough economic times flexibility with salaries is more challenging, but you may be able to negotiate on intangible benefits. These include things such as; more time off, longer holidays, opportunities for experience in other areas of the firm, training and education.

7. Make a point of understanding the business side of your firm. This is mainly what your managers are interested in after all. Whether this involves financial, marketing or legal issues – gaining some knowledge in the relevant areas and contributing intelligently will make your managers sit up and take notice - your advice may even become invaluable and sort-after. This is a big ask, however, as very few people have a good understanding and a good mix of skills in technology, engineering and business.

8. It is the long haul and persistence that matters. Don’t worry about short term setbacks in your career development. Reassess your direction every now and again, by all means, but ultimately set your objectives and keep trucking doggedly in their direction. Don’t give up or compromise.

Remember as Bob Wells remarked: Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.

Make sure that in your firm and with your clients you are considered one of the best there is.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

One of my good colleagues, Ric Harrison (our e-learning systems consultant), has written about the futility of this mad rush for certification and accreditation in everything we do…….read on…

If you were promised a starring role in a movie and were given the chance of coaching by Johnny Depp or Philip Seymour Hoffman, would you pass them over in favour of someone who had all the right teaching certification but never “made it” as an actor?
Similarly, if you had the opportunity to have your cricket or base ball team coached by a well-known local with an outstanding track-record, would you reject him because he did not have a “Certificate III” in coaching? Last week an example of this questionable selection process was witnessed. Two world-class cricketers, with impeccable experience (Justin Langer and Bruce Yardley), were advised by the Western Australian Cricket Association that they did not meet the criteria to apply for the role as coach for Western Australia’s (state) side. This is despite Langer having served as batting coach and mentor for the Australian national team. Yardley was somewhat bemused with his rejection, alluding to the fact that the state team was failing badly - coming last – in spite of the fact that the incumbent coach is certified, with a slew of qualifications. His comment: “…..it seems more important to have the right paperwork than consider what you can bring as a coach.”

An interesting and dare I say, bizarre situation.  The rejection of these two candidates is an example of what can happen when accountability for training goes mad.  Over-reliance on training “rules” meant that two prime candidates were not even considered, let alone interviewed or tested as coaches, despite their previous success and experience.

This is equally applicable to engineering training and education.  What makes a good technical training program? In reality, there is no guarantee of its worth because a committee of industry representatives or academics have ruled on the content and it is delivered by teachers with the appropriate ‘paperwork’.  The course content must, instead, accurately reflect what you or your firm needs today and facilitate, as a result, an increase in efficiency and productivity on-the-job.  Furthermore, it must be presented by people who have worked in industry and experienced the real-world application of the content they teach.

We mustn’t become carried away with rule-driven systems as the major deciding factor when choosing our training or education.  Systems do have a place.  They can be useful to protect students from poorly designed content and inexperienced instructors – or at least limit the downside.  But there is something far more vital to consider when choosing a training program.

If you want to be the best hockey team, or the most successful actor, or an engineering professional who is in demand, the real test of training surely can only be gauged by the results.

Take a closer look at intended training. Look at the details of the content, look at the instructors’ backgrounds.  Will the program help me in my work?  Does the content reflect what I and my firm really need?  And will I be motivated by experienced instructors who have more than book learning?  The result that you want, post training, is to be able to “hit the ground running” and increase your value as an employee, and the satisfaction you receive from well-executed work.

Like a cricket team or a budding movie actor, the best results will come from the real-world foundations of the training and education coupled with the proven experience of a seasoned instructor.

In terms of setting up rules for learning and training, we should always remember George Bernard Shaw’s dictum: The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

The inventor of the PLC – Dick Morley – is coming to you with a complementary video/web session

We have convinced Dick Morley to present briefly, “On the future of the programmable logic Controller and programmable automation controller” and to take questions from you. Join us for this fun 35 minute session on the 28th April 2010.
Please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you are interested and she will notify you of the exact time closer to the date. Naturally, it is a complimentary session.
Yours in engineering learning

Steve and Ric

Dear Colleagues

Theories should be treated with a degree of suspicion until proven beyond all reasonable doubt. You only need to remember the Y2K fiasco where Armageddon was predicted with the change-over from 1999 to 2000 on computer clocks - calamitous crashes and dreadful fallouts were forecast. Needless to say, nothing dramatic happened, although billions of dollars were spent in a frenetic push to “fix the problem”, which in most cases (if not all?) didn’t exist.  Similarly, I think climate change, and its associated predictions of global warming, has some way to go before we can say with any conviction that it is a certainty. The evidence does, however, appear to be quite convincing. The climate change proponents believe that temperatures could increase by between 1 to 7 degrees and wreak havoc on our lives and the earth, with the inevitable melting of ice causing significantly higher water levels. This would result in a myriad of problems, generally creating hardships for people and for many making their present existences unsustainable As a result we need to keep questioning and researching this potentially dire prediction.

‘Why should we bother’, you may ask, ‘what will be will be?’ Whether welcome or not, it is becoming a key issue in government policy and the public is beginning to accept it as fact. It will, therefore, impact on our lives and engineering careers sooner or later no matter what the truth is. It is thus critical to start understanding the issues. I must emphasise that I am not entirely convinced as I believe some of the evidence remains vague. Perhaps you will regard this as fence sitting, particularly as the predictions are widely claimed and somewhat overwhelming.

The climate change debaters include; the ‘promoters’ who regard the whole process as a big jigsaw puzzle – gradually building up the complete model by adding in bits of data, as they come to light, and rejecting bits, due to data contradiction. The ‘cynics or doubters’, on the other hand, believe the whole theory is a house of cards – you only need to remove one card and the whole shonky theory will collapse.

Not many people gainsay that carbon dioxide is a green house gas and can cause warming. The question is the level of warming created by it. Carbon dioxide emissions started increasing in 1750 (the beginning of the Industrial Revolution) with 280 parts per million or ppm, increasing to 316 parts per million (ppm) in 1959 and then up to 387 ppm in 2009. (The 10,000 years before the start of the Industrial Revolution carbon dioxide remained at a steady level). The stats do reveal a solidly increasing trend. The question is how much warming will occur with this increase in carbon dioxide, bearing in mind other confounding variables (such as oceans, water, earth and atmosphere). At present, there is some limited, but hard evidence of warming occurring (which as mentioned earlier is still hotly disputed).

It should also be noted that carbon dioxide’s direct impact is not the only thing to be concerned by. Other substances created by carbon dioxide, such as water vapour, can amplify the warming effect - carbon dioxide warms the air and moistens it as well (more water can dissolve in air at a higher temperature) and as water vapour is another significant greenhouse gas it contributes further to warming. Doubters were initially proven correct by satellite measurements which showed no warming in the lower levels of the atmosphere. However, over the past decade this has changed - increased warming has been measured in the lower levels of the atmosphere. In terms of water vapour, there has been some conjecture about the part that clouds play. Clouds reflect sunlight back into space and thus cool the planet. But cloud droplets of water have a strong greenhouse effect as they absorb heat and thus warm the planet. Which effect will dominate? In an attempt to accurately measure this and capture the real world’s seasons and weather patterns, ferociously complex computer models are being built. Very accurately, I might add.

As an aside, a cynical aside, data from the past shows that there was a mediaeval warming period. In an area of England, where vineyards grew, temperatures were apparently higher than today. Climate warming doubters thus exclaim that modern warming is simply a natural variation.

How should we respond?

Despair would be unhelpful. We should actively investigate the latest findings on climate warming and arm ourselves with a solid understanding of the topic so that, as engineering professionals, we can debate and act knowledgeably on the issues. If we feel strongly that there is truth in the predictions we should aim to minimise the impact. I am fairly certain that with the ever-increasing research into this issue many of the supposed ‘contributors’ to climate change will be discarded in the future and more safely replaced. This is where our interest should be piqued - we should actively investigate how we can benefit our engineering careers (and the earth) by working in the area of climate change and renewable energy. We should also actively consider how we can apply climate change technologies to our own engineering careers.

The cynics are quite right – there is still a considerable amount of uncertainty in the field of climate change. This does not mean, however, that we simply and conveniently ignore the issue. Whether or not the impact remains minor for the foreseeable future, there will be some impact on us all. It is worth investing time to remain abreast of the research and find out how to re-orientate your career appropriately. Whether you are an electrician mounting a photovoltaic panel on a roof or the chief design engineer contemplating a new power station, climate change will impact on your life.
 
I am sure many cynics feel that Albert Einstein’s brave suggestion sums up the climate change theory:

“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”

Thanks to the Economist for some entertaining and excellent reading on the subject.

The inventor of the PLC – Dick Morley – is coming to you with a complementary video/web session

We have convinced Dick Morley to present briefly, “On the future of the programmable logic Controller and programmable automation controller” and to take questions from you. Join us for this fun 35 minute session on the 28th April 2010.
Please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you are interested and she will notify you of the exact time closer to the date. Naturally, it is a complimentary session.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve