News

Dear Colleagues

First of all, thanks for the enormous response to common sense tips on safe practice and commissioning. We have been working on putting this into booklet form and will release it in the next few days. It will include a few hundred great suggestions (and unfortunately a few very effective, but risqué suggestions that cannot be reproduced!). One particularly interesting point has drawn horrified responses already - understandably:
 
………and still are unsure and want to ensure that an LV bus or terminal is dead; do so by touching the part in question with the back of your fingers with the palm open and facing you……… If the part is live, the shock causes the fingers to curl and the arm to move towards the body (both are involuntary reflex actions), thus breaking the contact.

Roger, one of our more experienced engineers, remarked that perhaps this would have been acceptable in many countries 30 years ago, but definitely not today. Furthermore, as one reader commented, if this were practiced in his firm the individual involved would be sacked on the spot.

This illustrates an important point. We all work in a global engineering community. If you have someone new in your country, do not assume that he/she has the same ideas of safe practice and procedures as you do. Ensure that a thorough retraining program is undertaken to ensure the necessary engineering standards and procedures are learnt. Don’t assume standards are the same, ever - an American working to European standards may be quite surprised by the different standards being applied in many cases. I do not insinuate anything other than differences exist and there are often reasons for these differences; a lack of money and resources, varying access to training, historical reasons, and generally just differing engineering standards et al.

This lack of consistency can apply even when moving from firm to firm in the same town. If you are working in the petrochemical industry with hazardous areas and someone new arrives, say from a manufacturing background, ensure he/she is trained and tested for the new hazardous areas environment. Similarly, if someone moves from the LV environment to an HV one. It is often quite staggering to see the misunderstanding that exists when someone starts in a new job with completely different demands and requirements. And naturally if you go to a new country or firm and the opportunity arises to raise the quality of engineering standards, this must be grabbed. Do so with persistence and understanding. You will inevitably save lives and often money.

As the Talmud remarks about danger and safety: Never expose yourself unnecessarily to danger; a miracle may not save you...and if it does, it will be deducted from your share of luck or merit.

I look forward to releasing your great collection of common sense tips and comments shortly.

Yours in engineering learning
 
Steve

Dear Colleagues

Back into the engineering fray or selling a unique engineering skill

You may have been out of main stream engineering for some time or you may be eagerly looking to get into some niche area of technology. Or indeed, your company has a new skill set to sell and you may be struggling to get it over the line. Some of the following may be posing problems:

• There is a gap in your career and hence your employment history
• Due to the implosion in the markets, your former contacts and networks have evaporated.
• And an added irritation is that nowadays you have to get past a computerized gatekeeper before you can even join the long list of applicants.

SO - some form of purposeful and meticulous networking, to secure this job, is critical. Especially in today’s world - companies are dynamic and have ever changing needs. You need to ‘get known’ by the firm and keep your name at the ‘top of the pile’. This can yield startling results. And the most promising situation of all is when you have some very specialized skills which you can demonstrate convincingly, I have often seen jobs being created due to the unique abilities of the applicants.

Some action tips for getting that engineering job that you want:

• Try and focus on niche expertise. Don’t be everything to everyone. Give your skills a boost with extraordinary achievements in your career.
• Target niche engineering employers who will value your specific experience
• Convince your would-be employer of the confidence you have in your ability by suggesting a remuneration increase, based on your performance, after being in the job for a while.
• Go the extra mile with presentations, white papers, outstanding references.
• Start the network and feed it. Keep growing your network and add to it with key players.
• Run the marathon; don’t blitz the sprint. Keep positive and persistent
• Keep your message and structure consistent. Ensure that your experience, bio and approach are aligned.
• Be bold in who you are and how you approach them for a job - Who dares, wins. A colleague, when first arriving in Australia, threw a dinner party for the top players in the aircraft industry to ensure a job offer. Approach decision makers directly; not through underlings.
• Demonstrate chutzpah and panache in your job search and applications. Be different to other applicants. For example use a youtube video to demonstrate your skills.
• Don’t compromise. If the job offer is not what you want or you have doubts about delivering, don’t crucify yourself. Avoid it.
• Be generous in your contributions. You have significant engineering skills and experience. Help others and help your would-be interviewers with useful advice.
• 
HT Leslie’s remark is relevant to our engineering careers and indeed, in selling our skills: “The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as in playing a good hand well”

Thanks Debra Feldman (of JobWhiz) for your interesting comments - from which much of this is drawn.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Moving into a new engineering job or simply moving from college to work

I have noticed that a number of you (perhaps more than usual in the past year of boom and bust) have just started a new job. This can be an enormously painful experience – whether it is a job straight from college or merely a new position in a new company. Herewith a few suggestions on the best strategies to ensure your engineering career grows in your new environment:

Don’t be disappointed. Set your expectations at a reasonable level in your new job. Whilst you may have been a guru in your previous job; it may take time to achieve this status in your new job.
Study the basics. Learn how everything operates - particularly from a simple administrative and operational point of view. Learn who the key players are in your new environment - “Who’s who in the zoo”.
Build your engineering reputation systematically. Ensure that you build up everyone’s awareness of your strengths and abilities – as modestly as possible. Everyone knew what these were in your previous job, but now no-one has a clue about how good you really are.
Listen carefully. Absorb as much as possible from everyone around you and keep your opinions to yourself – at least until you have established the lie of the land.
Communicate meticulously. When writing or talking or doing a presentation ensure that it is world class – don’t compromise with mediocrity. People are watching you carefully; trying to work out where you feature in their (perhaps mental) pecking order.
Project yourself professionally. Represent yourself and your firm professionally - you are being paid to do a professional job (presumably at a good rate). So ensure you are dressed reasonably cautiously and come across as a considered engineering professional.
Keep physically fit and fresh. Avoid late nights and blasting your body with minimal sleep and “noxious” substances. This is especially true of young graduates who have been used to extensive socializing.
Network vigorously. Do this both within the company and at the associated professional organizations - ranging from engineering to simple social get-togethers.
Look for a mentor. No matter how experienced you are, I always believe there is someone out there who can help you with your career or simply act as a sounding board.
Be politically savvy. Now I hate admitting this; but a lot of career progress depends on who you know, rather than what you know. This doesn’t require you to be slavishly subservient, but be aware of who makes the decisions and what they “thrive on observing” (!).
Enjoy yourself. Your career can represent a big chunk of your life. So ensure you are enjoying it. If not don’t compromise forever, make a change or move upwards and onwards…..

Thanks to Nina Patel of the IEEE for her article inspiring me to write this note.
Take advantage of a complimentary gift from IDC:

An IDC Engineering manual worth (over $120)
Let me explain. We are always keen to let people know about our engineering training courses and books. If you are so inclined we invite you to send out a non-sales email to your mailing list offering a free downloadable gift set (6) of our pocket guides (500 pages of purely informative material):

Industrial Automation (new)
Instrumentation
Data Communications
Electrical Engineering
Formulae & Conversions
Electronics

With your mail going out to a minimum of 2000 of your database we would like to thank you with an electronic 350 page IDC Engineering manual of your choice (see the list at www.books.idc-online.com

In a nutshell:
We will provide you with the email to pass on to your database. They will then have the chance to download our informative pocket guides and enter our database for engineering training updates. Alternatively we have software here to cope with mass campaigns. I can assure you we would not use or distribute your database if you choose this method.

And remember as Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked: “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”. So keep persisting and remain positive.

Yours in engineering learning
Steve

Dear colleagues

1. Just before launching into my somewhat brief consideration of smart grids please think about this: We are running a forum on smart grids in Melbourne, Australia, in September 2009, and we are looking for technical papers or suggestions.

2. On August 14, 2004, a power surge was detected in northern Ohio, USA caused by a failure of high voltage transmission lines. This resulted in probably the worst blackout ever in North America. The so-called “smart grid” could have minimized this fall-out by diverting power to the key areas which were affected.

The smart grid is a relatively simple concept but with enormous potential. As I understand it in brutally simple terms, a smart grid is simply overlaying the traditional electrical power grid with a communications network and effectively using the data gathered at all points of the grid so as to optimize its operation. This allows, for example; real time transmission of energy readings to utility companies without the need for manual meter readings. Nothing magical. But this can be extended in a myriad ways, such as changing power tariffs dynamically by sending data from the utility to the customer during periods of peak usage to encourage reduced consumption.

Some of the key characteristics of a smart grid are; advanced metering infrastructure (based on smart meters); visualization technology (to see what is happening over the complete grid) and integrating this with geographical information and managing peak consumption of electricity (to reduce the swings in power consumption – electricity unfortunately, must be consumed the moment it is generated).

The grid has become a very complex animal comprising “asynchronous, local (house, block, community, business, town) storage (super batteries, flywheels, superconducting magnetic energy, hydrogen, compressed air) and generation (wind, solar, geothermal renewables, added to gas, oil, coal and nuclear)’ (from Columbia - ref. below). The smart grid must also be able to deal with the unpredictable wind and solar power farms often located far away from the consumers.

So there are enormous opportunities for us all in providing solutions to this growing smart grid infrastructure.

What can we do about this information?

Read up more about smart grids:

There are heaps of great articles to read further up on this topic. Some of them are:

hhttps://www.energy.gov/search/site/smartgrid
 

Try and apply the technologies to our systems, whether they be isolated or integrated with the overall electrical grid
Look at applying your in-house technologies to smart grids
Consider taking the smart grid technologies and applying them to gas and water systems
Tell others about the incredible opportunities in developing the smart grid

With smart grids, we are obviously intent on designing systems to be absolutely fail safe, esp. to avoid black outs, but we should heed Douglas Adam’s (of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) advice: “The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair”.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear colleagues

1. Back to school

After being a few (or indeed many) years in the workforce, is it worth going back to school, or, for my British Commonwealth readers; engineering college or university? Especially in these recessionary economic times? This depends on several things, including; your industry, long-term career goals and your financial situation. If a graduate degree, or indeed any further study, makes sense, this rather despondent (and slack) period of the economic cycle can indeed be very productive to enhance one’s credentials and make oneself even more employable for when the economic cycle turns. Certainly being unemployed or underemployed can take a psychological toll and one starts to question one’s worth. Working towards something and re-inventing yourself can make for a healthier disposition. Other benefits, besides skills and know-how, are building up useful contacts with others in industry to enhance your career.

Obviously, consideration of your financial situation is important before making a decision - to avoid financial hardship in the short term. You may be able to access government loans to attend the courses, but this merely delays the financial bite. I recently completed a postgraduate degree at a local university and was horrified to find some of my fellow students (academic addicts) owing over $80,000 for the numerous courses they had been on. With very little chance of paying this back in the immediate future they were facing a horrible financial millstone. The million dollar questions: Are you going to be more marketable when you finish the course? Is the industry expanding or shrinking? Will you get paid more? A brutal "return on investment" question is required.

You may want to explore the "road not taken" type career. For example, you may decide to become a patent attorney working in the engineering and scientific areas – you will then need to add a law degree to your engineering degree or diploma. But take a hard look at where the jobs are growing. Join professional associations and talk to others to identify hiring trends and industry leaders. Don’t go into an industry or career which is dying. For example, moving into the car manufacturing business in the western world may be a challenging experience as it is in terminal decline, I believe. Whereas changing to medical technology from mining may be a smart move due to the rapid growth in the health care arena.

It is also a possibility that employers will view taking "time out" for study as "hiding out". But with this recession being more severe than others in living memory, most employers, I believe, will be fairly tolerant if not encouraging. Obviously the course must be aligned with your career goals - a course in Mediaeval History is unlikely to elicit enthusiasm from your employer when you want to rejoin the engineering workforce. But then you may be applying for the position of creative design engineer at some movie or animation studio such as Dreamworks.

The other question to consider is whether the study should be part time or full time? Much depends on whether you can manage with a reduced income (or indeed non-existent income for full time study). Part time study, on the other hand, although taking longer, does give you the flexibility to work during the day or to take on a part time job. In my experience, employers do not see any difference in quality between a part time or full time course for engineering (but I would imagine the situation is different for other disciplines such as for Law where prestigious schools can count).

And finally; just bear in mind that traditionally, at this time of the business cycle, graduate schools are inundated with applicants; so get in early and be persistent about your application once you decide to go for it.

Thanks to Eileen Zimmerman for her thoughtful comments on career guidance here.

2. Our regular Wednesday web conference sessions

I know I have mentioned this before; but our New Year’s resolution is to provide regular free webconferences on engineering topics of interest every Wednesday.

Industrial Wireless is rapidly moving in everywhere and as part of our regular Wednesday web conferences we are offering the following thought provoking non-sales presentation for those of you that are interested in, or currently working with radio and wireless:

Major disasters in industrial wireless and how to prevent them"

The presentation is over the web - with a live instructor. It is free. On Wednesday January 21.

We ran it late last year to over 90 participants.

You haven't experienced a wireless disaster yet? Well, it is probably only a matter of time! But there are tricks and strategies to follow which can help you sidestep real calamities. The webinar will involve discussion of disasters both real and potential, and the basic methods of preventing them. You can ask as many questions as you would like and interact live, with the instructor and  with the other participants.

Your presenter will be Edwin Wright from IDC Technologies.

The 45 minute presentation will be live in real time and repeated three times on Wednesday, January 21:
Session 1: 11am Sydney, Australia time (8am Singapore, 1pm Auckland)
Session 2: 2pm Johannesburg, South Africa time (12noon London)
Session 3: 3pm London (5pm Johannesburg, 10am Canada East)
 Join this webinar from anywhere and ‘bring an expert to your desk’! If you are interested or involved in industrial wireless you will benefit from this free session.

All you need to participate is a computer with an adequate internet connection, speakers and (ideally) a microphone. Joining the session is entirely free of charge. We will send you instructions about how to download the software and join well ahead of the session. Places for this webinar are limited to 20 participants to maximise the interaction and value to you.

To register simply email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .  Indicate which session you will be joining:1 or 2 or 3, and we’ll send you the joining instructions.

3. Volunteers for Advisory Board for postgraduate engineering study

We have always dreamed of shaping the perfect postgraduate engineering qualifications through using highly experienced instructors and designed for what industry really needs. To this end we are currently working on registering to provide masters degrees in engineering. The method of instruction will involve distance, interactive online learning. Our 20 years of experience as engineering trainers has provided us with the necessary impetus. We do not aim to compete with universities, but will draw on their most experienced lecturers to work with us in preparing and presenting the degrees. We have an ex-dean of engineering, from a prominent university, who will be heading up the academic department.

What we do need are volunteers to serve on our advisory academic panel. This panel would meet, online, once every two months for an hour or so and have considerable dialogue before then. The meetings will be conducted using web conferencing. There would be a small stipend to compensate you for your time. If you are interested; please contact our Accreditations Manager, Ms Edwina Ross at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. detailing your background and experience.

 Just remember whatever job you are in or are targeting - as Aristotle remarked so sagely a few thousand years ago (translated from Ancient Greek): - "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work"

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

I trust that you have had a great break over the past few weeks. I certainly had too much sea, wind and surf; but managed to improve my windsurfing skills. To kick the year off really well; we would like to give you a few gifts in appreciation of your support over many years. Naturally, we hope this will give us some PR for our engineering training courses for 2009.  We would be grateful if you would forward this email to any of your colleagues so that they can access these materials.

1. Free web conferencing software to present your own live, online engineering training and support - save significant money and time

As we hear repeatedly from TV and the newspapers; the recession has hit many countries and the important issue for you now is to cut costs and make your training go even further. And naturally to cut down on travel, hotel and other costs for you and your course participants. Without impacting on your training.

After three years of development, we would like to give you a free trial copy of our live web conferencing software (Electromeet) allowing you to provide live sessions over the internet using video, voice, text chat, whiteboard and sharing of your programs with your colleagues and students. This software allows you to provide everything from live training over the web, product training, remote support and, in future, remote labs. And indeed record everything you do, for later review by all the participants. We believe this is truly something of value and are offering it for unlimited usage for 30 days for sessions of up to 20 participants, and if you twist our arm, we will extend this complimentary Provider Licence period by another 3 months!   But we need your help in testing out the software, identifying any bugs, irritating features and getting your feedback, comments and suggestions – that is the only “price” of the Trial.

To access this package and to start your free trial; simply go to the web site and download at:

http://www.electromeet.com/download/Default.aspx

Contact Ric (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or me or any of our engineers to answer any questions you may have about using it.

And coming soon will be an update of our popular sessions designed to introduce the possibilities of online training and support.  The subject is “Applying Online Learning to Boost the Return on your Engineering Training”, a generic overview of the technologies available to engineers, technicians, and their trainers.

2. “Major disasters in industrial wireless and how to prevent them” presentation over the web - with a live instructor – free.  Wednesday January 21.

Industrial Wireless is rapidly moving in everywhere and as part of our regular Wednesday web conferences we are offering this thought provoking non-sales presentation for those of you that are interested in or currently working with radio and wireless. We ran it late last year to over 90 participants.

Web Seminar: Avoid industrial wireless disasters

You haven't experienced a wireless disaster yet? Well, it is probably only a matter of time! But there are tricks and strategies to follow which can help sidestep real calamities.
We invite you to join us on our forthcoming webinar: 'Major disasters in industrial wireless and how to prevent them'. It will involve discussion of disasters both real and potential, and the basic methods of preventing them. You can ask as many questions as you want and interact live with the instructor and  with the other participants.

Your presenter will be Edwin Wright from IDC Technologies.

The 45 minute presentation will be live in real time and repeated three times on Wednesday, January 21:
Session 1: 11am Sydney, Australia time (8am Singapore, 1pm Auckland)
Session 2: 2pm Johannesburg, South Africa time (12noon London)
Session 3: 3pm London (5pm Johannesburg, 10am Canada East)
 Join this webinar from anywhere and bring an expert to your desk! If you are interested or involved in industrial wireless you will benefit from this free session.

All you need to participate is a computer with an adequate internet connection, speakers and (ideally) a microphone. Joining the session is entirely free of charge. We will send you instructions about how to download the software and join well ahead of the session. Places for this webinar are limited to 20 participants to maximise the interaction and value to you.

To register simply email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .  Tell us the Session  (1 or 2 or 3) you’d like to join, then we’ll send you joining instructions.

3.      Engineering Whitepapers and software

We also have a rapidly growing set of useful whitepapers and software ranging from Instrumentation, Data Communications, Electrical to Mechanical engineering.

Just dive in to access them at:

http://www.idc-online.com/

Select Downloads and then Technical Downloads or Software or Pocket Guides

And I trust that in spite of the 'gloomsayers' that 2009 turns out just right for you and yours and is full of fun and engineering chutzpah.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

In our home, we celebrate a Scandinavian Christmas on the eve of the 24th December. Whatever your religion or culture may it be a time of peace and goodwill. Thanks so much for all your incredible support and feedback throughout the year. I appreciate this so much.

Over the upcoming holidays, take a few moments to think clearly, take notes and make changes about how you want to operate next year. The best is to write your objectives down for the year ahead. Be brutally honest with your personal appraisal - continue with the good practices for the new year, be honest about your weaknesses, your mistakes and blind spots. Write it all down in an easily accessible spot. I do this at the end of every year (hopefully my wife never finds this list - she would be horrified at how defective I am!).

I think there is an element of fear for what 2009 holds. I do believe, however, that it will work out well for all engineers and technicians. Keep sharpening your stock-in-trade – your engineering skills and ‘know-how’ and keep your eyes open for opportunities and innovative practices. In a web conference, we were conducting last night, the inimitable Dick Morley (the father of the Programmable Logic Controller), was ruminating on how he designed the first floppy disk drive, by observing how a playing card he flipped across the table seemed to float on a cushion of air. This led to the development of the floppy drive. I honestly believe these opportunities for engineering innovation surround us all the time.

We obviously have a full schedule of engineering courses for 2009 and an expanding range of books and e-learning courses. We also have a rapidly expanding set of whitepapers, software, pocket guides and other useful information available. You can use these in your work; courtesy of Rebecca and Maria who really work hard to make this a wonderfully useful repository of practical engineering information. You can explore this collection (at no cost) at our Downloads section at www.idc-online.com

Yours in engineering learning
Steve

Dear Colleagues

1. Well, a year has barreled past with bewildering speed and we again make our comprehensive 2009 Engineering Planner/Diary, free to the first 30 of you that request one. These books are full of useful engineering design formulae and tables with space available for each day’s notes.

2. Let’s face it - whether we like it or not; we all work with computer systems today. I was reading a really nifty list of mistakes that even IT pros make (thanks to Debra Littlejohn Shinder). I have adapted them for engineering professionals working in industry. I am not thinking of complex issues such as the misconfiguration of a firewall which shuts down your entire SCADA network for your plant (although this does happen); but more common place stuff. As engineering professionals, IT is incredibly important to us, so these suggestions may be useful.

2.1 Backup, backup and backup again - comprehensively
We all agree that backups are important. A colleague of mine, Clive Smith, who ran an Industrial Automation business, made the following claim: I would have the business up and running within 2 hours if a fire destroyed the premises and all our systems. This is all well and good, but when did you last check that your back ups actually work? I was horrified to find, a few weeks ago, that our expensive back up system had accumulated so much data (600GB) that it wasn’t backing everything up any longer. Plan for a fully fledged disaster so that when fire goes through your premises or a virus chomps everything up; you can indeed recover quickly. Have your new people been trained on how to recover your systems? If your key IT guy is away on holiday in Bali, is there someone left behind to pick up the pieces for a back up?

2.2 When there is any doubt, there is no doubt
When your web connectivity drops out, or your web site takes longer to load up, or the mail slows down intermittently, or your UPS mysteriously comes on - you can bet your bottom dollar that these are early warning signals of something developing which will generally deteriorate. It will not heal itself. Investigate, with the suspicious and persistent nature of a Sherlock Holmes, until you find out the cause or causes before you have real shutdown which impacts on the firm’s total productivity. Finally, don’t assume that the IT guy knows more than you do as a user. If his explanation about a particular problem doesn’t make sense, quiz him until you understand.

2.3 Document changes
When you change the configuration of the server or the router or make any other IT setting changes, document these clearly (in language designed for a layman). Store these documents in an obvious place to ensure that even that layman can find them!

2.4 Log to help with troubleshooting
It is often difficult to find out why a particular software application locks up or fails. Hard disk space is delightfully cheap so keep log files to track why your irritating program has given up the ghost at 3am. Many people don’t turn program logs on, as they believe they can save space. But they do provide a wonderful ‘black box recording’ of what happened when your software application suddenly nose-dived and crashed.

2.5 Budget for lots of time for critical updates
When updates are released for various programs, it is worthwhile testing them thoroughly so that they don’t introduce problems. Make the assumption that the upgrade will cause problems when installed. It is worth your while to try and find out what these problems are before inflicting them on the rest of the firm.

2.6 Do not upgrade in a hurry
I have a well worn thesis that any new software, just released and straight out of the box, is riddled with bugs and problems. It is startling that large multinational companies release buggy software to their long suffering clients (and then have the temerity to charge them for support). To avoid this pitfall do not install a new package until it has been in the marketplace for some months (and indeed years) - until you have confirmed with other users that all is well and it works really well. Upgrading at this stage will save you money and angst. I marvel at a very large, state of the art, multinational and highly profitable computer retailer which uses software programs that are years out of date, but which still work extremely well for their point of sale systems. On the other hand, don’t wait too long to install a desired package and lose out on the real benefits in using it.

2.7 Passwords and computer security are critical
The bandits are out there, beyond your firm’s stockade, waiting to destroy your IT system. Make sure you have regular password changes and manage your security carefully all the time. Educate your users regularly about the security of your network. When an employee leaves anticipate that she/he may still have access to your system unless you change passwords. Do regular virus scans and random audits of computers looking for potential problems.

2.8 Don’t bend for every little request
There are rules in running your IT system that apply to everyone. Don’t bend over to adjust rules for those who want things changed because of their peculiar circumstances (or pet programs that suit them). It chews up your IT maintenance resources, often weakens your security systems (eg. let’s adjust the company firewall so that you have easy access to the company server when you are in Kazakstan) and makes the overall system inefficient.

2.9 The IT system has to work for a living
The IT infrastructure is there to be used for the benefit of the organization so ensure it serves everyone effectively. Users must be able to access the internet for valuable information, send and receive mail quickly and effectively and share files easily. If you make life too difficult for your users, they will find innovative ways to bypass your security measures.

3.0 The KISS principle
Whenever you implement anything in the IT world, go for the simplest solution. Anything that is too complex (and undoubtedly clever) is often challenging to keep working. We implemented a hot standby system a few years ago, regrettably, with clever back-ups which was simply too complex to work on a continuous basis. We have simplified it considerably since then.

3.1 Train others to do the IT support job
No one is indispensable. Train others to support and manage the network. This also facilitates the IT guru taking leave without your IT system collapsing in chaos. Arthur C. Clarke remarked: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I believe, however, that an IT system should be anything but - it needs to be brutally productive and down to earth.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

When I was a junior engineer in a large multinational company, I was always bemused by the succession planning for engineers and technicians. Potential for advancement up the technical ladder in your early twenties was great - from trades, technician or graduate engineer level all the way up to plant manager. And then, if you were very good, you had the opportunity to gain the position of chief engineer. But after this, unless you were politically very astute, well connected or possibly had an advanced management qualification you were pretty stuck. The only option then was to leave the firm to continue with your career or face zero career advancement or even land up being deskilled. There was no attempt to promote you upwards in a technical sense.  In essence, technical or engineering skills were not regarded as highly as management or marketing or financial skills. Despite the protestations at my first firm, there was no real succession planning for engineers. And I got the feeling that if you had been an engineer for a long time and hadn’t moved much, it was incumbent on you to leave.

As Gary Perman from the IEEE remarks: the number one reason why engineers leave a company is that they perceive management has no interest in developing their career - exactly why I left my first job. He goes onto remark that a company shoots itself in the foot by failing to exploit (and reward) the talents of good engineering professionals. The result of this is morale decline and productivity drop-off. Succession management is critical in a company – to identifying successors in all roles and to ensure there is a match between a company’s needs and the aspirations and abilities of individual engineers and technicians. Needless to say, if you are incompetent or have risen to the highest level of proficiency in your job, then don’t make waves for promotion otherwise you are going to be in an ‘unwinnable’ situation.

In today’s economic climate, the approach is often to neglect succession planning. Yet it is a time when it is critical that everyone contributes to keeping the company vibrant and  opportunities for growth noted and acted upon. According to my sources (including the US dept of Labor) even in today’s rocky market, there is a critical shortage of engineering professionals because of aging and a lack of new entrants, so succession planning is critical if you, as a company, are to retain and grow your good guys. And succession planning is not the sole domain of large companies. It applies to small 3 man partnerships as it does to multinationals with thousands of engineers and technicians.

Whether you are an engineering professional, starting off in a firm, or a senior engineer in an organization what do you need to do:

• Recognise that engineers and technicians’ careers need to grow with the business to ensure their retention and to improve the bottom line of the business
• Ensure there is a long term, real succession plan for you as an engineer in the firm you are joining.
• Ensure, as a senior engineering manager, that your engineers and technicians, with real potential, have a long upwards path in order to add value to the firm and to themselves
• Leave for better prospects outside, to avoid short changing yourself, if you have the ability and the company’s succession plan looks fractured
• Ensure you always look after the talented engineering professionals in your organization. With today’s emphasis on company’s Intellectual Property residing in the heads of employees - when they leave, they take a bit of the company value with them.

We most definitely want to avoid, in our engineering careers, Thornton Wilder’s remark: ‘Life is an unbroken succession of false situations’.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Hello to you all,

Steve is languishing in hospital having had a rather tatty, ruptured appendix removed.

In the past you contributed to the following document:

Commonsense Engineering Safety Tips When Commissioning a Plant

The first paragraph from the foreword in the document is included here:

Dear Colleagues As an old engineering colleague of mine, wryly remarked to me recently - engineering and technical graduates are often like babes in the wood when newly on-site, as their practical and safety knowledge is almost non-existent - despite an intensive 4 year (or longer) study program. My retort was that it didn't only apply to young engineers and technicians - and that; "common sense is not so common around here" is often an appropriate expression even for old hands. As we all know, electricity (well, energy) is extremely dangerous and can kill or maim even when a little careless. Fortunately most acts of carelessness result in a mild jolt (or electric shock), leaving no permanent physical reminder of the incident; but the unfortunate get life-long scars or worse.

This link will take you to the rest of the foreword and the document: http://www.idc-online.com/papers/CommonSenseTips.pdf .

Steve would love it if you could peruse the content and then send him some suggestions - to extend and/or update it.

From his proxy and a recovering Steve in Engineering – always have safety at the forefront of your thinking in all you do.

The IDC Technologies Team

I was somewhat bemused – actually horrified - at an innovative use of tagging at some nightclubs. A tiny RFID tag is apparently injected into a regular nightclubber’s arm to allow him/her to side-step the interminable queues – she/he merely has the tagged arm scanned! This also allows the nightclubber to run up a bar tab without using any cash. Walmart gave the technology a kick along in 2003 when it made tagging mandatory for all suppliers. These suppliers were not overly enthused, inevitably, as they had to pay for the tags. But I see with interest, that the technology is steadily growing in importance and as a result is probably worth some research.

For those of you not too familiar with RFID: Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a technology that facilitates electronic labeling and identification of objects using wireless communications. Essentially, a RFID system comprises three basic elements:

(a) Electronic tags: These are attached to various objects and carry relevant data about the object tagged. The tags are technically referred to as transponders or contact-less data carriers and each tag has its own embedded antenna.
(b) Readers: These include antennas that read data from RFID tags. The readers are also capable of writing/modifying data onto tags - depending on their applications.
(c) Communication/software application: The tags and readers communicate using well defined radio frequency and associated protocols

Most UHF RFID tags are passive requiring no internal power. The reader sends a continuous wave signal to the tag, which responds with its identification code using backscattering – up to 5 metres.

These tags cost less than 10 US cents each and by 2010 it is estimated that the number of RFID tags manufactured worldwide will exceed 33 billion (from 1.3billion in 2005) at very low costs (perhaps a few cents).

The IEEE noted that there are four frequency bands for RFID operation: <135kHz, 13.56MHz, 860-960MHz and 2.45GHz. The two lower frequencies have slower read rates and larger tags, but better ability to read near wet or metal surfaces. They have passive-inductive coupling, while the two higher frequencies provide for passive or active tags.

Being very precise in gathering data (compared with the usual barcode approach), RFID tagging has a wide variety of applications including; baggage handling in the airline industry (and please put up your hand if your bag hasn’t been lost at some time or other?), health care, marathons and fun runs, fare collection systems, animal tags and grocery tags.

How to respond to this technology?

1) Look at possible applications of tagging in your plant or factory (eg inspecting instruments by confirming that they have indeed been checked).

2) Read up about the technology. (You can access the first chapter of our manual, on the subject, at the above link)

3) Talk to others about the pros and cons of the technology

4) Look at improvements you can make to your technology using RFID tagging

Obviously this technology has to have real benefits - once you remove the publicity glitz. As Richard Feynman, the famous physicist, noted: For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear colleagues

Most of you will chortle quietly when it comes to protecting your intellectual property (IP). “What intellectual property?” you may think, with some exasperation. But you will be surprised at how often the simple ideas that you have developed over the years become intensely valuable property. IP represents the property of your mind or intellect. There are various types of IP, such as; patents, trademarks (letters/phrases/logos), designs (shapes or appearances of manufactured goods) and copyright for original material (programs and books). Most of us are familiar with patents, which grant an exclusive license to the patent holder for a period of 20 years (in the US, at least), but copyright is slightly different. A copyright (this can vary from country to country), gives a maximum of 95 years for corporate ownership, or for the life of the author, plus 70 years. It is interesting to note that copyright (and indeed circuit layout rights) are automatically granted to you upon the creation of the material. Other IP rights (patents being the best example here) have to be registered with local and international governmental organisations. Registration does vary, however, from country to country. For example, in the US, copyrights are registered with the government, whereas in Australia, no registration is required.

As you know, the global market is becoming increasingly aggressive and shrewd when it comes to stealing valuable ideas and knowledge - to gain that competitive edge. Ownership of the IP rights give you the legal recognition of your ownership and goes a long way to protecting it from unfair competition. It is quite an expensive and onerous task, but a worthwhile consideration.

A famous example (albeit a simple one) of where things went awry is the Kambrook power board. The product was enormously successful and led to Kambrook becoming a major world player in this consumer business (esp. in the Asia Pacific region). But the IP was not protected. It should have been patented and as a result, within a short time, it was copied unscrupulously and sold throughout the world by aggressively competing firms. The originator of the idea continues to lose tens of millions in royalties every year.

There is no doubt that intellectual property is the main engine of growth for any business and is especially advantageous in challenging economic times. Clever thinking and an edge is essential - ranging from innovative engineering designs (eg improved efficiencies), to pioneering engineering technologies, such as; deep water drilling or space exploration.

In essence, don’t simply give away your intellectual property, but treat it with as much respect as you would cash and your other assets.

A few strategies:
• Consider what IP you have. Often this is what gives you and your business a competitive edge.
• Reflect on how you are protecting it
• Avoid telling others about your IP until you have protection in place
• Implement strategies to harness the development of IP in your firm

We should always remember the remarks of an old sage when it comes to our most valuable assets:
The wise man carries his possessions within him.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues.

We’ve all heard about the incredible unused capacity of the brain, but recent research I have been perusing is impressive and will have an enormous impact in our engineering worlds. Most scientists have thought the brain to be ‘hardwired’ or fixed – well, soon after birth anyway. However, Doidge points out that the brain has an incredible ability to change itself – it is actually very ‘plastic’. No matter your age. He has backed up all his work with solid scientific and medical experimentation - enough for me to believe this is not just mumbo jumbo. He outlines situations where; people with learning disabilities, people with parts of their brains missing and stroke victims have been able to recover their faculties and abilities and indeed develop new skills. This is only achieved with significant effort, however (the inevitable catch). The brain is not a fixed collection of specialized parts, but is a dynamic organ that can rewire and rearrange itself as the need arises. This is providing that work is done to improve it - as if it is simply another muscle that needs to be exercised and strengthened.

How can we use this information?

• Keep learning and exercising your brain. How you think, will cause your brain to reshape itself (and be you)

• Train your brain in the fast changing skills of the engineering and technology world – it can adapt to this technology driven world no matter how old you are.

• Work on improving your IQ and memory power by using regular mind exercises

• Be wary of the negatives with a plastic brain – avoid lazy environments – these impact on the brain negatively – the brain will become lazy unfortunately

• Encourage the non-believers in technology to jump on board and join us - anyone can gain skills in engineering and technology if they genuinely want to – the brain is up to the challenge

• Improve your brain by constantly exercising it and challenging it with new information. As I have indicated in earlier newsletters, keep stretching your brain and make it work hard – it needs lots of exercise otherwise it gets lazy and ineffective – just like any other muscle.

• Look for opportunities in engineering and biomedical sciences - harness this know-how to build products – all the while taking advantage of the plastic brain.

And I heartily endorse what George Dorsey said:
The more you use your brain, the more brain you will have to use.

For the references above thanks to Norman Doidge MD who wrote the inspirational book: “The Brain that changes itself”.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

I must gratefully acknowledge Dave MacDonald, our engineering risk consultant (currently examining risks at an international airport), for detailed advice on risk engineering in this note. I have been horrified by the basic misunderstandings by our so-called financial experts on risk, especially concerning the fact that risk is not randomly distributed and thinking that each event has no bearing on the next event in a sequence (as you can see unfolding on TV over the past week). Now if they had been slightly more quantitatively oriented such as you this issue would not have arisen. Please forgive the slightly more tutorial note here but I believe it is worthwhile. Risk engineering is a principle that underlies most design and maintenance tasks in engineering. It is interesting that the approach to most design tasks follows the simple principle that the expenditure of money and effort in any project must be appropriate to the rewards and appropriate to the level of risk that will be accepted by the public and the business owners or investors.  Risk engineering is a principle that underlies most design and maintenance tasks in engineering. Simply put we adjust the level of effort in design and the expenditure on equipment to suit the objectives of the mission. To do this safely and effectively we need to apply the principles of risk management to the engineering tasks in hand. Firstly, what is risk?  It’s the combination of the likelihood of a specified event and severity of its consequence.
 
i.e  Risk = Frequency of  Unwanted Event  X  Scale of Consequence
 
The event: In the practice of engineering design the event is generally an undesirable thing such as a component or system failure or a dangerous hazardous event such as an explosion or fire.
 
The frequency or likelihood of the event has to be estimated by some method of data gathering or analysis.
 
The scale of consequence depends on how much damage the undesirable event is going to cause either to people or to the environment or to the business profit and loss account.

Measuring the risk or risk assessment is the key to the application of risk based design.  If you have hard data on failure rates, a very good understanding of the failure modes and can predict the consequences of failures accurately you can quantify the risk very well. Usually we do not have that luxury so we have to use various ways of estimating and approximating the risk calculation to achieve a good feel for the risk. In the design process the risk estimation task is critical and it seems that this where most of the mistakes can occur. In particular engineers need to be alerted to the sort of problems that have beset the financial world. If we do not have a good model for cause and effect then we may be in danger of underestimating the impact of individual failures of parts of the system. .
 
By way of an example: in safety control systems it is a well established principle that an independent shutdown device will protect against a failure of a process component or a control loop. But this will not work very well if we have failed to notice that there is a common link between failure of the process and its protection system. These are common mode failures. (In banking systems if you secure your housing loans by backing them up from another bank that also does housing loans this is a pretty basic common mode failure waiting to happen!)
 
We have seen how the generalized models for risk management are directly applicable in engineering management. Risk management involves the systematic analysis of risk levels, knowledge of acceptable risk levels and the selection of measures to reduce risk to the acceptable level. The selection of measures involves balancing the  level of risk achieved against the cost of achieving it. 

Action steps for dealing with risk:

* Ensure you estimate the risks correctly
* Understand the causes and effects well (eg common links)
* Apply measures to reduce the risk to acceptable levels
* And, naturally look at the costs of achieving this reduction in risks carefully
 
Especially as far as our financial friends are concerned, George Patton hit the nail on the head: Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.

Yours in engineering learning
 
Steve

1. These pieces that I write every week aim to pass on some tiny, condensed bit of information to engineering professionals. The amazing thing, however, is that I get far more learning passed back to me from your comments. Thank you.

2. Negotiating is always a thorny topic, but I can guarantee that if you haven’t already utilised the techniques that I have outlined below, you can now make yourself a few thousand additional dollars a year. And for your firm, millions of dollars - real dollars. I believe most of us engineering professionals don’t negotiate enough. We accept the status quo when purchasing or selling something. In our quantitative minds, we accept that the price must be right as it is generally set by others “who know better”. Or we believe it is unprofessional and demeaning to “haggle” over an item. And we often believe that it is about a win-lose scenario - if you beat the price down sufficiently, the other party loses. But believe me, even in established department stores, with a supposedly rigid pricing structure, you can negotiate if you have a reason (imperfections in goods, out of date goods, no spares available). People are looking for reasons to give you a great deal. And a better price. Obviously, you have to justify the reason for the lower price. Simply applying the battering ram approach and demanding a lower price isn’t going to be successful. It is critical to understand the other person’s point of view almost as well as your own – ensure you are clear about what he/she wants and then look for alternatives to the standard solutions. I remember a university exercise, many years ago, in which my classmates and I were split into two groups/tribes. We were living on an island and had to negotiate over a crate load of oranges that had washed up onto the island. The crate load of oranges was crucial for the survival of the group – less than this was not adequate to prevent death, so a compromise seemed impossible.  But we had not clarified exactly what each party really wanted – we had assumed that the other tribe needed it for the same reason that we did. It turned out that the one tribe needed the orange skins and the other the flesh of the oranges. Inevitably, the brute force, winner takes all strategy simply didn’t work. But if we had gone to the trouble to understand the other party…….

There is definitely no point in destroying the other party in negotiations. It is better to protect their interests, particularly if you are looking for a long term relationship – otherwise it may come back to haunt you. We were the consultants to the construction of a power station. The client was tough and wasn’t prepared to tolerate any relaxation of the original contract terms (delays in delivering the power station occurred due to unexpected wet weather and labour disputes). The contractor ended up with particularly severe terms in the negotiations for liquidated damages and went out of business shortly afterwards. This resulted in a power station that had to be completed by someone else at an enormously increased cost and with huge delays.

A few proven techniques with negotiating – no matter whether you are the buyer or seller:

• Avoid an adversarial – you-lose-I-win approach
• Build trust and co-operation - work as partners
• Try and uncover hidden issues when listening to the other party.
• Research your position and that of the other party thoroughly and work out possible solutions before you negotiate.
• Communicate your position clearly and simply and make sure the other party understands you. Clarify your understanding of the other party’s requirements. Indicate a proven commitment to coming to a win-win solution - What do you have that the other party wants? What can you give away at minimal cost to yourself, but which is worth a lot to the other party?
• Reframe the problem so that it is solvable by a win-win solution. What compromises are possible?
• Wait in silence when you have stated your price - do not talk.
• Look for solutions by “expanding-the-pie.”
• Write down the final agreement and confirm this is what has been understood

As far as negotiation goes, William Shakespeare’s advice (in Much Ado about Nothing) from the 1500’s is timeless, insofar as trusting a third party when interpreting a situation:

Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love:
Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;
Let every eye negotiate for itself
And trust no agent. 

yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

I am always intrigued by people who portray themselves as experts. Today we are all keenly aware of the carnage wrought on the financial markets by the so-called experts. Perhaps if someone had more aggressively questioned their assumptions, beliefs and actions (and presumably fat commissions), our world-wide financial well being wouldn’t be as exposed today.

Steven Vick in his well researched book ’Degrees of Belief’ writes about the key qualities of an engineering expert: The ability to pose questions and respond quickly, self awareness and self knowledge, deeper problem visualisation, innovation in problem representation, observation and memory skills, writing skills/preparation, hard work, persistence and initiative. Certainly a long and challenging list. My favourite is the ability to pose questions. I would add the following qualities: The ability to listen carefully to others and ‘self learning’.

I have found out the hard way, as have you I am sure; that you have to question everyone’s knowledge or claims. The actual level of real knowledge of your particular problem, demonstrated by a so-called expert lawyer/doctor/real estate agent/engineer/IT specialist or even social worker may in many cases be abysmal. Never trust the expert’s opinion - particularly if you have doubts. As Robert De Niro pointed out:
“When there is any doubt, there is no doubt.”
All experts should be questioned – they may not be up to date with a particular technique or breaking research – or lack the clarity of understanding necessary to utilize it – with your particular requirement.

So Rule No. 1: Do not trust anyone’s “professional opinion”.
A metallurgist showed me his technique for assuring himself of a good outcome -many years ago he questioned my design assumptions for an industrial automation system for a large iron ore processing plant. He kept posing the (very irritating) question: “Why” to every statement I made. And I had to explain, in simple English, why I had adopted a particular course of action.

You will never be disappointed when you keep questioning your expert (but often disappointed with the person’s actual grasp of the situation). Don’t let the expert seek refuge in mumbo jumbo technical language either. I firmly believe that if a proposed solution to a problem cannot be described in simple English then the expert probably lacks the necessary understanding too. There is absolutely no reason why you can’t be an expert in a particular area and discuss issues on an equal level with your hired consulting expert. I believe that engineering professionals are particularly well suited to working with experts in varied environments as we thrive on being strongly quantitative, objective and questioning – all from an early age. As we all know, the physical world is particularly unforgiving with subjective solutions to problems.

I had a warm, fuzzy feeling when I was dealing with an ophthalmologist for an eye injury I received recently whilst working in the garden. I researched the damage to the eye carefully through using the internet and by talking to the doctor. I saw the welcoming glow and sign of respect when he saw he could discuss the problem with me on an equal footing. And I had more confidence when I walked out of his office with a joint plan of action - designed by both of us.

A true expert will welcome your knowledge and love to talk to you as an equal.

My suggestions when working with an expert are:

• List and carefully research your queries before meeting your expert so that you are not disadvantaged and railroaded
• Research the issues using the web and consider the opinions of others
• Investigate ground-breaking techniques and consider it using “lateral thinking” – have faith in yourself
• Question all assumptions and solutions proposed by him/her – do not rely on the expert being omnipotent
• Do not be daunted by his/her vaunted skill/knowledge (and arrogance that often accompanies it) - deal with the expert as an equal
• Apply your unique solution of the situation to the solution proposed by the expert. Most of the time you have a greater understanding of the particular application and how it integrates into your overall business
• Keep asking  “why” until you get a satisfactory answer
• When in doubt; send the expert away to re-investigate and resubmit a solution (or gracefully disentangle yourself as you may have found that you actually know far more)

I like the famed physicist, Neil Bohr’s take on an expert:

"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field."

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

1. Whilst on this Queensland roadshow, I have really appreciated those of you who have approached me to chat about your work and engineering lives. Contrary to some reports I am not lying around the various country town pubs guffawing over copious beers. Our charter flights generally arrive at the next destination at midnight and everyone is up at sparrows for the next onslaught of visitors - so it can be a long day.

 2. I am sometimes inclined to agree with Thoreau who noted that "most people live lives of quiet desperation" - people who are unhappy personally and in their careers. As far as the engineering or technology job is concerned - for some of us, it is working in technology-intensive environments (design/installation/configuration), but for others, it involves working in maintenance and operations, a less intensive environment. And occasionally - for some there is great wealth and the directing of large companies. The "good life" is very personal and differs for each of us. Our jobs, however, are vital in achieving life satisfaction as they consume big chunks of our days. I am sure many of you have dwelt on the various alternate activities you could engage in during your work days? I know the answer for many of us would be to take an extended break from the hum drum and relentlessness (and inherent stress) of our work days. Perhaps even retire and go fishing, or travel, or……... But I really doubt that deep down this is the solution.

If you are unhappy with your current job, you do have the capability to change to something better - design the career you really desire (and indeed deserve). I believe, however, that we engineers and technicians achieve some fundamental satisfaction from our jobs as we are generally making or fixing something which leads to tangible benefits for the community. Indeed, we tend not to be involved in ripping people off with interesting financial feats or becoming embroiled in legal shenanigans, as do lawyers, or bracing ourselves against the boredom of doctoring - seeing the thousandth patient with flu and sagely remarking "its going around at the moment".

Some weeks ago, I met this inspirational technologist – Johan - someone absolutely passionate about his job. He showed me around his paper mill with great pride. He started off, many years ago, as an electrician with a modest diploma; but by dint of enthusiasm, a thirst for knowledge and panache for upskilling himself he is now in charge of the entire data communications network for this massive plant. It underpins the state of the art Distributed Control System (DCS) with fieldbus, fiber optic and high speed industrial Ethernet networks – engineering at a world class level. He was a key player in drawing up the detailed specifications for the DCS upgrade for the plant when he worked with and directed engineers throughout the world. He has an enormously detailed knowledge of the latest technologies. How did he gain this knowledge and get to this position - bearing in mind that he was originally an electrician wielding a screwdriver and multimeter?

• Through some training - yes, I am obliged to add this

• Perhaps more powerfully, by draining experts of their know-how, when they visited his site

• Regularly consulting the experts in the industry (when I visited him he was talking to one of the top engineering networking specialists in the country)

• Studying the various approaches and standards in detail (with a little flourish he showed me the thumbed standards of the latest and varied communication protocols he often refers to)

This all took him years to achieve, but as his plant managers saw how effective he was on-site, they were only too delighted to provide him with whatever tools he required. He is now absolutely crucial to the running of the plant, but despite this possession of enormously strategic information he has recorded everything meticulously and professionally for anyone to refer to. Furthermore, he delights in training others and his passion in this field makes him an inspirational technologist and teacher.

Old news, but necessary reminders:

• Pause for a second and write down what you truly want to do in your career (and personal life) and then work out how to get there (make these realistic and achievable goals)

• Design your job so that it fits you – ‘A Designer Job’ - and work out the skills you will need
• Find some relevant training if this is required

• Edge yourself into this environment by; reading, talking, appointing a mentor and getting experts to pass on their knowledge to you.

• Work towards getting rid of the tasks that are hum drum and take on more challenging and interesting work.

• Be useful, competent and enthusiastic to ensure you are fairly renumerated

• Maintain and update your skills – they are the same as those finely crafted pieces of furniture you make on the lathe – they date

Above all, ensure you are clear about your intended direction in your career. As Yogi Berra noted:
"If you don't know where you are going; you'll end up some place else".

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear colleagues

1. Thanks very much for your comments on engineering burnout - I will publish these anon. And naturally thanks for your amazing support on the very successful Roadshow throughout Southern Africa. One issue that was highlighted is the terrific and growing shortage of good engineering professionals - throughout the world – who are globally mobile. They are diminishing in number and obviously in demand. As one recently graduated female engineer remarked to me: ‘We are now in the golden era of engineering.’

I am now up in rural Queensland doing another Roadshow before spending a long time at home - thankfully. The UK (and eventually Canada) Roadshows are still some time in the future.

2. Older technologies have a habit of fighting back when new ones come along. Obviously this makes sense as there is a massive amount of engineering R&D, design and production know-how invested and one can't simply chuck all this work in the bin. A case in point is the venerable internal combustion engine using superchargers that force more air into the combustion chambers of its engine - an old idea used in the 1920’s with “blower Bentley’s”. It provides, however, a 40% increase in torque at low speeds. This can reduce the size of a car’s engine by 50%, use less fuel and result in fewer CO2 emissions. Other developments are electromagnetic controls used to open and close valves (independently) rather than with the mechanical pushrods operated by the camshaft.

This allows for the shutting down of cylinders and the switching from the traditional Otto cycle to the ultra lean Atkinson cycle, where less power is required. This can cut emissions and fuel usage by 20%. Other designs include the Daimler DiesOtto engine which runs as a petrol engine for high performance and changes across to diesel mode for low and medium speeds providing massive fuel savings. Soon cars will be breaking the 100mpg barrier. This is truly remarkable. And the much vaunted new technologies (which have been touted to replace the venerable internal combustion engine); such as fuel cells, hybrid systems and electric motors will be chasing a moving target as these older technologies innovate.

So what lessons are there here for us?

Don't change to new technologies simply because they are new. Examine older ones carefully and see whether you can build in new technology rather than replace it all with a completely new paradigm .My acknowledgements to The Economist and Edmunds.com for their information here.

In engineering as well as poker, I believe, in terms of applying new engineering technologies, my slight modification to Josh Billings’ comment is quite apt: “Life consists not in getting good cards but in playing those you hold well”.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear colleagues

1. Currently on the road in Southern Africa presenting a complimentary series of topics on lightning, process control, hazardous areas and new engineering learning technologies to generally great attendances. Thanks so much for the support. What really amuses (but stresses) me, is that although I try and prepare meticulously for each presentation one always has the curved balls thrown. Like today; no power in town, all day! This effectively nullifies my presentation (which requires power and telecoms). But the show has to go on. So alternative plans, involving access to a diesel generator at another venue, is the name of the game.

2. I notice with concern that burnout amongst engineers and technicians’, working around the world, has increased dramatically in the past few years. This seems to be due mainly to the increasing shortage of and pressure on engineering professionals. Burnout is insidious and ultimately devastating, personally and career-wise. Thanks to those of you who suggested ways of dealing with it.

A survey recently undertaken in the Australian construction industry showed that emotional exhaustion is one of the key results of burn-out. Competent engineers are being pushed to the brink and then are summarily dumped when they have been used up. Not necessarily maliciously, but because managers often don’t know how to deal with engineers and technicians who have been pushed to their limits. Interestingly enough, the burn-out survey also revealed that engineering professionals believe that they are making a good social contribution to the community, but are not being compensated adequately. Nothing new here. Andrew West pointed out:

“You can also overburden an engineer for a while and get increased productivity. And engineers are obliging types. They like to prove how useful they are and how important the things that they do. But at some point they are asked to do too much with too little.”

Paul Vermeulen pointed out the enormous administrative overload thrust on engineers when they could be more productively employed doing real engineering. This causes stress and frustration. Dewald Scholtz felt that:

“Engineers like to quantify and qualify and reason things out. This is useful and good, but not in excessive, unbalanced quantities. These activities need to be balanced by 'right brain' activities. I have found dancing, stretching, meditation, childlike games,…. conversations with highly spiritual people, making music (very badly, I must confess) and purposely doing things sometimes very different to my 'normal nature' very helpful”.

So what do we do about burn-out?
If you are working long hours under considerable stress, stop and weigh up the benefits against the possibility of burn-out. Watch your staff and peers for signs of burn-out and take corrective action. It is better to have a long term valuable member on your team than a shattered shadow. Strengthen yourself to fight burn-out with some of Dewald Scholtz’ ideas; dance, stretch, meditate, play games/sport, talk to people outside of engineering and make music Talk to your manager. Take some time off to smell the daisies.

And dealing effectively with burnout makes it more likely that; job satisfaction, job commitment and sustained productivity will result.

Notwithstanding the above, it is important to put vigour and enthusiasm into one’s life and work - as Jack London pointed out:

“I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot..… The proper function of man is to live, not to exist”.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Thanks so much for the stack of mail last week and great enthusiasm for downloading the videos we have been collecting. I get responses from people living far and wide - from the middle of the Kalahari (where is that you might exclaim) to the city slick environs of New York City. Thank you. 

Next week, I am going to talk a bit about engineering burn-out which I have come across with a few buddies. Something we all need to watch out for - it can quickly destroy us and our careers. If you have any experiences here, please let me know. Naturally, I will respect your confidentiality.

Two fascinating engineering items today which will, undoubtedly, impact on our lives as engineers and technicians.

1. In two day’s time, the first protons will spin their way into the Large Hadron Collider (circumference of 27kms) after a decade of work and $10billion – certainly the world’s largest machine. Some of you will no doubt mutter about more mumbo jumbo physics, irrelevant to us as engineers, but this is indeed investigating the fabric of our universe from which we derive all our wonderful engineering designs. The collider is especially looking for the Higgs Boson which carries the force of gravity in the graviton. As some of you may dimly recall from your first year physics, the first few particles have already been found: Gluons (strong nuclear force), W and Z bosons (weak nuclear force) and photons for the more familiar electromagnetic force (doing everything from pointing the compass north to preventing objects from collapsing). What is the practical application of all this stuff? A detailed understanding should enable us to rapidly move to the pioneering edge of engineering with everything from better communications systems to better materials. (Remember that “odd little thing” which most of us engineers were a little bit uncertain about, many years ago, called the World Wide Web - the coding system? It originated from these labs). Interestingly enough, the collider will also create tiny black holes (hence the recent legal action to prevent it going ahead – there was fear that the world was liable to be consumed by this – we will find out on the 8th August). These black holes will evaporate in a puff of radiation (Hawking Radiation) named after that absolutely inspirational physicist, Stephen Hawking, and will give him his richly deserved Nobel Physics prize (a practical demonstration, to support the theory, is required before it is awarded).

2. Scaled Composites, headed up by Bert Rutan, is about to launch White Knight Two - the first stages of a spaceship for the inimitable (Sir) Richard Branson – the largest carbon composite plane yet built with a single wing of 43m (with the rather boringly named SpaceShipTwo slung in the middle). This will be lifted to an altitude of 15kms and then released. It will make its way to the edge of outer space with its six, fare-paying passengers (at $200k a pop). The possibilities with this technology are superb:
• Launching small satellites into space at a fraction of the current costs
• Providing very low cost zero-gravity flights
• Studying atmospheric physics on a smaller budget (at a level above a planes’ reach, but which is too low for satellites) 
One of the more intriguing aspects of this project is the carefully worded comment by Rutan. He remarked that building the aircraft has demonstrated something “very significant” about the main structural support on a wing - it will permit the construction of an aircraft of “any size”. From what I know about Rutan, he isn’t known for making outrageous claims. So there may be something here.

What do we need to do:

• Watch these new technologies unfold and see how we can apply them to our businesses – no matter how trivial we think we (and they) are
• Use them to market a technology-driven career – surely these activities are infinitely more interesting than being slumped at a desk doing accountancy and law?
• Take a deep breath and look at how we can apply them in completely unrelated, but critical fields such as; medicine, mining and renewable energy

With these incredible jaunts to the limits of current technology, John Muir is so right when he remarked: “The power of imagination makes us infinite”

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Do you remember the heady days in ’69 when the first crackly radio messages were coming in from our first men on the moon? Perhaps you weren’t alive then. Despite being a child, I recall the absolute excitement at seeing the grainy images of Neil Armstrong plodding on the surface of the moon. Many of you will no doubt decry the massive waste of money poured into space exploration and whilst I feel that some of the money spent on the arms business could be gainfully spent elsewhere, I feel the space business has a definite benefit. This is the result of many arguments with my more liberal down-to-earth spouse who chortles at the rather ‘blue sky’, esoteric benefits we derive from space exploration. Stephen Hawking, noted wryly that: “What is justification…on getting a few lumps of moon rock? Aren’t there better causes here on Earth”. But as he points out, we could have argued “that it was a waste of effort and money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase. But the discovery of the new world made a profound difference to the old. Spreading into space will have an even greater effect. It will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all.”

Currently led by an accomplished professional engineer, Mike Griffin, NASA turned 50 on the 29th July and has become somewhat controversial in the wake of some of the disasters and complaints about public money being misspent. It was set up rather hurriedly in the fifties, in response to the imminent launch of Sputnik by the old Soviet Union. This led to NASA’s finest hour, when John Kennedy announced that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Unbelievably, in the sixties NASA had access to almost 1% (0.75% actually) of America’s GDP to make this a reality. The pictures transmitted back to us of the frail earth hanging in “a hostile void over an unchanging lunar desert” changed our view of ourselves. And perhaps our relationship with God? At present in NASA there is tension between the manned (shuttle and space station) and unmanned (third of the budget of $17bn) teams, for budget and resource allocation. The real exploration of space, however, is accomplished by the unmanned group - as we observed from the latest Mars efforts.

The thrust today is for NASA to create a more open system thus allowing other companies and individuals to join in.

What should we do with the information coming out of NASA and space exploration?

• Look at ways to harness this. Google have set up planetary visualization projects such as Google Moon, and Google Mars. Others are doing protein crystallization projects on board the space station. 
• Use it to excite our youth into moving into science and technology and to embrace engineering.
• Examine how we can apply the incredible virtualization technologies from unmanned space exploration to our own engineering worlds. For example, the vehicles on Mars, provide some superb opportunities to apply this more vigorously in unmanned work in mines and underwater exploration and indeed (my favourite interest) remote labs.
• Grab and use some of the great free resources (incl. stunning images of space) floating out from NASA - which few people are aware of. We refer to them in our courses. See them at: www.nasa.gov  ( then to http://www.osti.gov/bridge/ for some pretty good engineering books/reports). If you haven’t been to the site, do yourself a favour and browse for a few minutes and add it to your favourites.

And remember what Abraham Lincoln said (as far as the rather uncertain space exploration effort goes): "Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored."

Acknowledgements to The Economist for the inspiration for the article (and one quote) and and Stephen Hawking’s Keynote on ‘Why we should go into Space’.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear colleagues

1.Last week, as I laboured up the myriad of ladders (admittedly secured with a harness), with the family, to the very top of the Sydney Harbour bridge, to that most magnificent view of the city and harbour, I considered some interesting facts:
• Whilst it is not the longest steel-arch bridge in the world, it is the largest and widest (Guinness Book of records).
• It has a span of 503m and a weight of 39,000 tons
• Built by Dorman Long in Newcastle, England and opened in 1932
I then pondered some interesting engineering issues. It is a truly magnificent, engineering marvel and one of the most recognisable symbols of Australia (together with the Sydney Opera House of course). The project managers amongst us would  grin wryly when noting that when completed the cost was more than double the original quote and the final payment for the construction loans was not made until October 1988; some 50 years later!

Some important lessons, however, can be gleaned from the Sydney Harbour Bridge:
• Good engineering stands the test of time and can pass massive economic benefits to future generations. This bridge is going to be around for another 400 years and each day raising considerable revenue.
• Engineers from England built the bridge, but this raw design and construct technology have almost disappeared from the UK. We must carefully hoard and sustain engineering skills to guard against their loss.
• We need to plan financially for the long term with engineering projects - and not expect a quick buck. When the bridge opened only 11,000 vehicles crossed daily. Now 161,000 vehicles use the Bridge each day. Surely these incredible financial and logistical benefits were not taken into account by some beancounter in the 1920s.
• A successful and very profitable climbing business for tourists (such as me) has been built around the bridge. This was only set up some 70 years after the bridge was opened and is now worth a reputed $15m per year. Admittedly, it uses the latest high tech climbing gear and accoutrements, but illustrates that synergies are possible - the most unbelievable opportunities are waiting to be spun off from existing businesses and engineering assets with some lateral thinking and panache.
We need to promote engineering symbols to let everyone know that engineering is not a grubby pursuit but something with vision and nobility. How many engineering symbols do you know that have been so widely used?

2. Some disquiet was expressed by many in my last note as to the real proof for climate change (as an aside - the source I often refer to for inspiration is the Economist). Contentious issues are important as they encourage rigorous study and research, to counter (and perhaps support) the placid acceptance of an emerging and popular view point.

But as far as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and our engineering assets go, I believe what Winston Churchill said to be so true: "We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us"

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues,

Apologies for the break in our usual weekly offering, our captain, Steve Mackay is braving the madness in Sydney, for a well deserved break from the madness here at IDC Technologies.

As a special consolation prize, visit our videos page on our website with the link below and view some spectacular and scary engineering videos. As always, feel free to add your two cents by emailing us!

From Bec Caldwell, on behalf of The IDC Technologies Team

Dear Colleagues

1. This past month's persistent spike in oil prices and the horrendous damage fossil fuels are currently wreaking on both our environment and pockets and in the longer term, the economy, has prompted this today. We have depended on fossil fuels for over 200 years now and any change appears impossible. The green message, which includes simply using less energy, whilst appealing, is not workable without considerable damage to our economies. Inadvertently and as a result of various crises, we have been forced, at times, to cut back on our energy use; the power crisis in South Africa and gas pipeline explosion in Western Australia, are two examples. These have both resulted in forced reductions in energy usage and have had (and continue to have) an enormous impact on the local economies – particularly in terms of the loss of income to companies and consequently to jobs.

Strategies to conserve and utilise energy efficiently have much to offer and make perfect sense. You only need look around your home at your VCR/PC and assorted appliances chewing power at some ghastly hour of the morning when everyone is in bed! The dollar tally of this wastage would be a good few hundred dollars a year (or more). I was also struck by the world's consumption of power - 15 Terawatts (presumably "everything" from cars to electricity) translating into a business of $6 trillion per year - enough to attract many 'greedy capitalists' the world over!

I believe oil supplies are still available - the current spike in oil (and gas) is driven by factors other than a geological shortage (at this stage) and when traditional oil (out of holes in the ground) runs out, there is a plethora of tar sands and liquefied coal. But there is certainly no doubt that we are entering a new phase with the energy economy.

It seems evident that there are four differences between this crisis and the earlier ones.
• Demand for energy has jumped, in part due to the growth in China and India
• Over the past 30 years, technology has actually produced some marvellous advances in wind/solar technologies and high tech batteries.
• Investors (and presumably the "chancers") have jumped on board initiating massive projects in wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy (posing other challenges to the environment, inevitably…..and a little cynically).
• We have solid scientific evidence of the damage that carbon dioxide is doing to our environment and there is an urgency to fix it. (Whether this race to alternative energy will stop the concentration of CO2 from reaching dangerous levels is debatable. But we have no alternative but to go for it.)

So what can we do about it:
• Investigate alternative energy sources with the full knowledge that we have entered a new era with no going back
• Promote solar/wind and bio fuels at every feasible opportunity
• Encourage governments throughout the world to tax carbon usage (even though China and India will laugh at us initially)
• Encourage competition between the suppliers of alternative energy to bring prices down
• Focus on looking after our environment in our designs
And no matter how small we think all our endeavours are in fixing the problems here, I think Socrates hit the nail on the head when he remarked:

Better to do a little well, than a great deal badly.

2. I am awaiting permission from the authors before publishing a number of really good pieces on mentoring - hopefully this week, in time for next week's newsletter. We have also identified some more really great videos that are available in a complimentary form - thanks to you all for your suggestions - I will post these in the next few days.

yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

I am grateful to my colleague, Ian Gibson, for passing on a copy of the recent BBC Richard Dimbleby lecture, presented by the well known engineer and industrialist, James Dyson. Some of his thoughts are discussed below. As Ian dryly remarked - 'Dyson is no sucker'. Although a superb engineer, he is also a businessman with an extraordinary manufacturing business operating throughout the world and he has clarity with regards to engineering and its place in our society.

Although his comments are focussed on the decline of manufacturing in the UK (where he remarked irritably that frivolous designs are often considered as important as designing an aeroplane), they have applicability to us wherever we are in the world today. To survive and prosper as engineers we need to urgently focus on creating new, more advanced products and to be continually innovative. Simply relying on 'shallow styling' and marketing is a sure-fire dead end. Service, creative industries and software products cannot replace manufacturing. His large manufacturing company almost went under with the massive increase in taxes and costs in the UK. To survive he shifted production to lower cost countries, but boosted his R & D and engineering design team in the UK. He is now prospering. He points out that whilst China has mastered low cost production they are now going hell for leather in mastering high level engineering design (which they are increasingly doing with their acquisitions of companies such as RCA televisions, Alcatel cellphones and Dornier aircraft - notable examples).

The Western world feels that engineering manufacturing is dead - and in this so called post-industrial society, service and creative industries have replaced manufacturing. This is patent nonsense. Of the world’s top ten corporations, by revenue, nine 'make big, heavy things' (I like this phrase), such as turbines and cars.

He feels that there are three successful models of manufacturing in the 21st Century:

High tech in a high cost country - such as Rolls Royce manufacturing. They have the engineering know-how, value, reliability and safety (eg. turbines for aircraft) so can prosper.
High tech using both the high and low cost countries - with the R &D, strategy and direction remaining in the high cost country and the manufacturing in the low cost countries - Dyson's business.
High tech, but mainly outsourced to the low cost countries - Stylish Apple  outsources manufacturing and engineering, but markets its brand at home.  However, as Dyson points out, if a rival makes a significant technological leap, styling and branding counts for nothing. I don't agree with Dyson on this entirely as Apple have created new technology as well and used an innovative simple design. Admittedly they do outsource their engineering and this could be problematic.

One of his remarks is note-worthy: 'As long as we continue to innovate and produce products that have better features and work better, we can compete'. When we stop doing this, we are gone.

Dyson recommends that we:

• Give engineers a free hand in engineering design
• Encourage more entrants to science and engineering
• Get financiers to pour more money into R & D invest in the future of the business (he spends 16% of revenue on R&D)
• Avoid shallow styling at the expense of good engineering
• Ensure that colleges focus on engineering design and less on industrial design
• Use our brains innovatively, persistently and creatively to design and build products which simply 'work better'

At the end of the day, to draw on that great quote from Thomas Edison: "Invention and success are one percent inspiration, 99% perspiration". Occasionally one wins Lotto, but for consistent success we have to work hard and innovatively to get the results. Something the financial engineers on Wall Street have found to their cost over the past year.

Thanks to the BBC.

Yours in engineering learning
Steve

Dear Colleagues

1. Last night, I watched with a curious mixture of concern, bewilderment and delight at my 10 year old son expertly bundling up an animated video he had made, and then uploading it to Youtube - the ubiquitous video site. My concern was for someone so young exposed to the questionable content in the internet video arena; my bewilderment at how quickly and easily he had mastered the process and my delight at the engineering training opportunities available to all of us. As a multimedia tool for learning, video has probably been around longer than anything else. In the past, it has been difficult to deploy, compared to text, slides and audio. But bandwidth poses fewer problems than ever before and storage has crashed in cost. There are many ways to store your videos now (eg. Youtube), (some?) of the editing software is easier to use and (video) cameras have dropped in price. The biggest challenge is to master the basics of using the camera and lighting – and, naturally, making good instructional use of the video (this can be easily learnt and is an enormously enjoyable experience).

Over the past few weeks, we have commenced a process of amassing an enormous number of video clips for our courses. Admittedly most of those from the Net are fairly mediocre, with the exception of some gems which possess enormous power for a 2 to 3 minute presentation. A couple of these links are listed here:

• An animated demo of TCP/IP and Ethernet -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbY8Hb6abbg
• A huge explosion at the marshmallow factory - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8HcQ1Va6RY
• Electrical accidents such as arc flash and power cable failure - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKRudUOSFE4 Programming a PLC - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvS_BuQlSXo .

It would be great if you could send us any that you feel are good. I will then compile a list of yours and ours and post these great engineering videos for everyone to access.

2. Our weekly engineering web conferencing sessions continue to gather steam with over 30 enthusiastic participants in one presentation last week. If you want to join us and make your own technical presentation (a max.of 45 minutes) please let me know and we will schedule you in. You are welcome to join just as a participant and see what it is all about.
 
Last week I was gratified (and perhaps rather embarrassed) to have world class experts - who know infinitely more than I do - attend my presentations on Process Control Loop tuning. Mike Brown kindly gave us some useful, practical tips on what works and what doesn't. And this week Ian Verhappen, fresh from an ISA Fieldbus meeting, gave us a brief run-down on where he felt Fieldbus and Industrial Ethernet was moving. Thanks so much to both of these veterans of the Instrumentation and Control system industry. Both, by the way, didn't hesitate when using the medium and scribbled away on the whiteboard and chatted to everyone as if they were sharing a few moments over a cup of coffee. Exhilarating to see this free exchange of information occurring.

However, with this plethora of new technology around, bear in mind, Carrie P. Snow's comment: "Technology......is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other."

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear colleagues

1.We welcomed a sizeable group of people to our complimentary, inaugural mini forums last week. During the session they interacted live (see and talk), with each other and the presenter, using our recently developed iQuokka e-learning software package. We had some excellent discussions and as a result would love to expand on this. The mini forums involve short presentations (20 to 25 mins) with some great discussions at the end, at no cost to participants (apart from the time commitment).

2. I noticed with some fascination the latest buzzword emerging from the computer world and one which is certainly impacting on our engineering lives; ‘Cloud Computing’. The idea is that computing is increasingly being supplied as a service over the Internet due to higher broadband speeds and more reliable software. And the irritation with constantly have to upgrade one's computer can be minimised. All one does; is run the programs we normally use on our own computers, on a more powerful central server located somewhere "in the cloud". Using this cloud computing also makes us feel, naturally, that our impact on the climate is reduced. Sadly (inevitably?), the opposite is happening. These data centres are growing rapidly and contain thousands of server computers with some facilities stretching to well over the length of an aircraft carrier or two. And unfortunately they greedily devour and belch out energy (accounting for an unbelievable 1.5% consumption of electricity in the US today). Within 12 years, their carbon footprint will be larger than for aviation. Frighteningly, this has happened in just a few short years. Ominously, the consultancy group, McKinsey, reckon that a third of the servers are running on empty or idle. Absolutely wasted energy as the administrators have lost track of what program runs on which computer ("let’s pull the plug on a computer and see which client shouts loudest" is not just said in jest, but is a real indication of what goes on in these data centres - and you thought your dirty industrial plant was a problem!).

Oddly enough, computer makers seem to be keen to draw attention to the scale of the problem. Fortunately they are now talking about performance per watt in recognition of the need to measure and reduce energy consumption. The EPA feels that employing the latest technologies could reduce power consumption by half. And some new advanced technologies are being designed to minimise this impact.

A few suggestions:

- Get figures of efficiency and find out what the carbon impact is when using a computer or cloud computing.
- Actively look for ways of saving power to your computer systems (even the ones in the cloud) - cutting your bill saves the planet and your wallet

Interestingly enough, William A. Smith, born in 1908, remarked on engineering well before the climate problems became known so many years ago:

‘Engineering is the science of economy, of conserving the energy, kinetic and potential, provided and stored up by nature for the use of man. It is the business of engineering to utilize this energy to the best advantage, so that there may be the least possible waste.’

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

In addition to the hundreds of whitepapers (growing daily) on our site freely available to you, we have also placed up a reasonable number of conference papers (from the UK/South Africa and Australia) for you to download (at no charge obviously). These range from Pumps: Maintenance, Design and reliability, to Safety Control Systems and Industrial Wireless systems. Obviously we would appreciate it if you would acknowledge the authors (and their companies) if you refer to them in your work. We are enormously grateful to all these engineering professionals who made their expertise and knowledge freely available to their peers.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Conference Papers

A selection of papers presented at past conferences.

Pumps: Maintenance, Design and Reliability - South Africa 2008

Bernard Da Cruz - "Pump Characteristics and ISO Efficiency Curves"
Cornelius Scheffer - "Pump Condition Monitoring Through Vibration Analysis"
Hugo Howse - "The Use of Thermal Spray Coatings to Reduce the Life Cycle Costs of Mine Dewatering Pumps"
James Cowling - "Condition Monitoring, Lubrication Control and Electrical Current Discharge Protection for Pump and Motor Bearings"

Safety Control Systems - UK 2007

Harvey Dearden - " Whos Afraid of IEC 61508/61511?"
Clive DeSalis - " Certification in Perspective"
Colin Easton - "The Safety Integrity Verification of Legacy Safety Instrumented Systems"
Marc Pijnenburg - "Definition of Safety Instrumented Functions"
Stewart Robinson - "Two New Standards for Machinery Safety-Related Control Systems"

Industrial Wireless and Ethernet - Sydney 2007

Graham Moss - "The Wireless Plant of the Future"
Wayne Manges - "Intelligent Wireless Technology Agility, Mobility, and Security"
Jamil Khan - "IEEE802.11- based High Capacity Wireless LANs"
Asghar Khan - "The Sydney Water West Camden Recycled Water Supply Project "
Deon Reynders - "The Nuts and Bolts of Industrial Wireless Communications"

Dear Colleagues

1. Thanks so much for the flood of suggestions every week - some taking alternative views to mine so they are definitely worth reading. Many include really interesting suggestions which I try to place on the blog site. Please remember that thanks to the conferences we are running we are putting up a selection of good quality engineering papers as well (in addition to our white paper archive). These are accessible at www.idc-online.com

2.  I am currently on a roadshow with a rather eclectic group of engineers and technicians. I have been struck by how many technical disciplines they have progressed through during their careers. One engineer, John, started life as a metallurgist, then moved on to work as a mechanical engineer in flow measurement, but is now focussing on IT applications to process measurement using satellites to transfer the data. Recently he combined all this experience with some business skills to build up a successful business employing twenty people - providing solutions through the Asia Pacific.

I noted, some time ago, that one of the greater challenges with our engineering careers, I believe, is the rapidly changing nature of them. As we all know, much of what we did ten years ago is more or less obsolete and no longer valid practice. But we all start off with common foundations - maths/physics and often chemistry in our initial training.  There is an incredible overflow between the different disciplines anyway and they can't be put into little discrete boxes. The old timer engineers were always a source of great inspiration to me with their wide range of skills ranging from electrical, mechanical and even the new-fangled electronics and computer engineering. With a 'can do' attitude to all tasks that confronted them - grab a design book and study it or ring a colleague and quiz 'em. The old timers often ended up with a novel concept which had great significance, but in the process to achieve this end had started a completely new industry (often in totally different areas to their primary disciplines).

There is so much cross pollination between the different disciplines that jumping into other areas is often extremely productive for our own discipline. What I am suggesting is that we remain open to the acquisition of knowledge from the other disciplines – not merely tolerant, but eager to learn. Nothing is more enjoyable to me, as an (electronics and automation) engineer, when commissioning a plant, than to assist with the troubleshooting of a centrifugal pump or the review of some thorny electrical distribution problem, or  assisting an operator who is trying to implement a new procedure for her plant with new equipment that is perhaps not performing to spec. 

The know how and skills gained from moving into these other areas is incalculable and generally very useful in future design and commissioning work. And let's face it, most of us want more remuneration and opportunities - becoming an engineering manager for example, often means heading up multidisciplinary teams – the greater the spread of experience often results in increased respect and success.

So my suggestions are:
• Never turn down the opportunity to acquire any skill from other disciplines.
• Encourage your colleagues to do the same and thus to increase the storehouse of valuable skills in your team.
• Watch for opportunities to leapfrog from your current area to a new burgeoning area of activity even if it is outside your current skill area.
• Increase your enjoyment and appreciation of engineering by widening your skill window.
Gaining a diverse set of skills is perhaps what Aldous Huxley had in mind when he remarked: There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self

yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

1. First of all - thanks for the further stream of comments/corrections and additions to the engineering safety document. I will acknowledge everyone shortly and we will update this booklet by late next week.

2. As engineers and techies we are required on a daily basis to stretch ourselves - engineering skills/know-how/designs/installation works/costs (and judging by last week's comments – safety). But what amazes me is the one area that is critical to all of us and yet still lurches along with only small improvements - battery technology. This is despite the technology being around since the early 1800's, thanks to Volta. Essentially a battery is made up of one or more cells, each with a negative and positive electrode, kept apart by conductive electrolyte that allows ions to travel between them. Rechargeable batteries make up two-thirds of the world battery market (56 billion dollars)

The first rechargeable battery (lead-acid) was invented by Plante in 1859 and is still much used today. In the early 1900's an electric car was a common sight, but they could not compete, on range, with the noxious, petrol driven ones. Nickel Cadmium batteries arrived in the 1900's and were used where more power was required. Lead acid and nickel-cadmium cells still dominate the market today as they are more cost effective even though they can't store as much energy, per weight, as the newer technologies. Nickel-metal hydride batteries have been in the market place since 1989 and store about twice as much energy as a lead-acid battery for a given weight. Lithium-ion is composed of the lightest metal and can thus store more energy than other metals.

Modern phones and laptops are using cobalt oxide as the positive electrode, but as it is so reactive it is not suitable for hybrid or electric vehicles. Manganese can be used, but this stores less energy and has a shorter life. Instead of cobalt oxide, iron phosphate is cheaper, safer and more environmentally friendly. It is not easy to predict which lithium ion will prevail. Between now and 2015, estimates suggest that the worldwide market for hybrid-vehicle batteries will more than triple to $2.3billion.

Perhaps we need to devote more resources and thought to this critical research - as Albert Einstein remarked: "It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer". Batteries need the same attention and improvement as computer chips – the latter have doubled their performance, every two years, for decades now. Perhaps climate change and high oil prices will finally give research the incentive.

Thanks to The Economist for their input here.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve