News

The first few weeks in Jan’08, with rolling power cuts, have been hell for industry and mining in South Africa. There is a feeling that the genie has escaped from the bottle and with it a sense of reality.  And solutions to the recent developments seem elusive.

The 2010 World Cup is being held in South Africa! Confidence in the success of these games is difficult with the power shortages prevalent, with few remedies apparent.

I must confess that I was wryly amused with these problems facing our engineering cousins in South Africa as the crisis has been looming for a good few years with little forward planning evident.  If I were directly exposed to it, however, I would be less than amused, downright irritated and rather twitchy about future prospects for a reliable power supply. 

Possible solutions have included reducing the demand, accelerating the construction of power stations and using more renewable energy solutions. More extensive private sector provision of power has been encouraged too. Despite the obvious lack of power available in a burgeoning South Africa there also seems to be some incompetence afoot.  Contractors responsible for coal delivery to the power stations have failed to adequately supply them, for example, exacerbating the problems of unplanned outages. Furthermore, the lack of engineering training seems to be an issue – not only with regards to technical training, but also in engineering management. There is an important lesson for us engineers and technicians in this whole debacle – no matter where you live in the world -
 
As engineers and technicians we must actively look at the issues that confront us on a daily basis and anticipate the problems and crises that will occur and make engineering opportunities of these. And then actively canvass our local (political) leadership to fix the problems with suggested realistic engineering solutions. And then using media spin to hold them responsible. Whether it be; diminishing reliability in power supplies, inadequate sewage, crumbling infrastructure, defective telecommunications facilities, polluted environment, poor quality water or neglected education facilities.
 
At the end of the day, we are the engineering experts and can provide the solutions. And sadly enough, if we don’t do anything about it, we are ultimately responsible for the crises that result. After all, each country gets the political leadership they deserve (or elect).
 
A US President, John Kennedy’s remark is relevant to this crisis and others in the future:
The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity.

Yours in engineering learning
Steve

Dear Colleagues

On my travels in Southern Africa; this morning I witnessed a horrible car accident with a little kid being tossed into the air after running across a road. Later, a good client working for one of the largest companies in the world, commented that a smelter component had recently exploded and killed an operator. A couple of nights ago, whilst supping in a sea-side café we saw flares being shot off from a small boat in distress and then shortly afterwards a rescue chopper buzzing out. And a few weeks previously, in the self-same city, an engine had fallen off a Boeing 737 whilst taking off. These all have put me to thinking of safety.

Many of these safety issues, are perhaps a little outside our direct engineering province coming down to better road or boat safety practices and a good dose of commonsense, perhaps. But the smelter explosion and engine the falling off the Boeing illustrate the issues of process safety and machinery safety respectively – issues which directly impact on us engineers and techies. I am grateful to my colleague (a real control systems safety guru), Dave Macdonald, for giving me the necessary summary below on current developments in safety control systems. No matter where you are working in engineering, you will increasingly come across these safety standards discussed below. So forgive us for a quick tutorial below. I found it very useful personally. Thanks, Dave.

The first question is of course, why bother about safety standards ?

The great advantage of having international engineering standards for safety is that if we all work to the same principles there will be globally available products that will do the job in the same way in any part of the world. Good standards represent best practice, and who would want to stand in court after an accident and not be able to claim that they followed best practice? So we are moving away from locally generated prescriptive standards, which are difficult to maintain and use on a global basis. After all, we are rapidly becoming a global engineering community and we all want to use the best solutions.
 
As the best reference source for designing and managing automatic safety systems for process and machinery hazards the standards IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 have been a resounding success. They are not just European standards; but truly global standards covering the subject of functional safety, which means an active function or response to protect against a hazardous condition. Think of safety interlocks, trips and critical alarms.

But what the hell are these IEC 61508 and 61511 standards ?

IEC 61508 has been in place for nearly 10 years. It provides a broad-based set of principles and advice on how to specify and build safety control systems using electrical or programmable electronic systems such as PLCs. It has a strong emphasis on safety management through the entire safety life cycle of a product or application ranging from a pressure sensor to full sized ESD for a large oil and gas installation. It’s emphasis on management methods is because human factors remain the dominant cause of failures in functional safety systems. Whilst IEC 61508 is a generic standard for any form of electronic safety controls, it has in turn led to the publication of the more specialised standards: IEC 61511 for functional safety in the process industries and, more recently, IEC 62061 for machinery safety controls. IEC 61511 has been adopted in many industrialised countries for safety controls in their process and energy sectors and is published in the EU as EN 61511, in the USA as ANSI/ISA S84.01(IEC 6151 Mod) and in Australia as AS 61511. 
 
These standards ask you to define each safety function accurately and to set target safety integrity levels (SILs) in the range 1 to 4 according to the scale of risk reduction you need to make things safe. The equipment you provide must be capable of meeting the SIL-rated performance features.  They will not allow you to use just any old instrument for sensing and they have stringent requirements for control equipment such that most standard industrial PLCs will not be acceptable for safety duties. If this sounds like something you have already inherited, now would be a good time to consult IEC 61511. (Try. www.iec.org  or www.saiglobal.com )
 
Where do we start with safety standards ?

The first step is to decide which standard applies to your situation. IEC 61508 is predominately used for the design and development of safety equipment and hence is used mainly by manufacturers to ensure that the hardware and software they supply for safety applications are right for the job.  But if you are engineering a process control project with safety involved you will need to use IEC 61511. It is laid out in the form of a safety life cycle with a series of easy to follow steps matching the stages of a typical project.  Most significantly all the standards we have mentioned call for the competency of engineers and technicians working on safety systems to be appropriate to the job in hand. This means your employer should recognize your skills if you have them and get you trained if you are falling short.
 
We have spoken about Process safety – but what about machinery safety ?

IEC 61508 has influenced a substantial revision of existing machinery safety codes resulting in two new standards: ISO 13849-1 which is now replacing the widely used EN 954-1 in the field of machinery safety interlocks, IEC 62061 which is aimed at typical manufacturing automation applications and robotics. To get started in machinery safety practices requires a grounding in the principles of risk assessment and the application of all forms of safety features. These in turn lead to the understanding of how safety devices are to be integrated into the overall control scheme for a machine.

Without wanting to sound like a Persian rug salesman, we obviously provide training and books on the above topics. As do many other very reputable organisations throughout the world. But there is a wealth of free material on the web to assist you. Despite all this above, we should never forget, as Jeff Cooper, wryly observes:

Safety is something that happens between your ears, not something you hold in your hands.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Two items today:

 1. Over 300 shareware software programs available

Thanks for the superb responses of a few hundred programs to my request for shareware and free software. We are finalising the list and should have it out next week with a free CD or easy-to-download from the website. Much obliged.

 2. Are we tilting at windmills with solar and wind energy?

I always admire engineers who practise what they preach. After my nuclear power article some weeks back and the rather violent response from the esteemed readership, I had a particularly thoughtful response from Alex H., a senior consulting engineer with one of the world’s larger consulting firm. He outlined his thoughts on the preference for renewable or clean energy and noted that he has his home wired up completely for solar energy. Not a watt of electricity is purchased from the local electrical utility. As he pointed out: “Incidentally I have been living in an off-grid solar powered house in the bush on and off for the last 6 years and it’s a breeze - no different from the city except that I don't get a power bill.” He continued to say that renewables are not the whole answer but should be considered as the most significant part of the system. Their advantages are cheaper in capital cost (esp. compared to nuclear power) and shorter lead times to installation (hence the large number of wind projects in the pipeline worldwide). But his reservation was that we are not clear about how best to integrate them into the current power system paradigm (wind, solar, geothermal, hot rock, hydro and thermal).

The clean energy business is turning into the next big investment boom. Investment in the field has gone from $500million in 2004 to over $2 billion today. This is fuelled by high oil prices, energy security fears and global warming concerns. The economic problem is that renewable power and fuels will be more expensive than the dirtier sort for the foreseeable future; government hand outs are essential to make this workable in the short term at least, however governments tend to let tax breaks expire which often causes a hiccup in the industry (eg wind generation in the USA some years ago). If oil prices dropped below $50 a barrel, the momentum would be lost as governments again lose enthusiasm for the carbon-free technologies due to the more expensive subsidies required. At present, keeping pace with demand is the challenge – manufacturers of wind turbines have full order books for years ahead; solar firms are outpacing the supply of high-grade silicon to make their panels and investors are rushing in. Despite all this, solar power will still only provide a tiny percentage (1%) of the world’s energy for the next decade, which can be dwarfed by the other pressing issues.

The point made is that despite this flush of enthusiasm for renewables, there will be many bumps along the way. It is important as engineers that we keep the rudder steady and keep persisting with bringing the prices of the renewables down and improving the technologies and staying the course. No matter what happens.

 So my suggestions are:

• Keep researching new improved technologies in renewables
• Actively look at applying these technologies in our next design
• Educate others about the benefits
• Do what Alex did and set up your own domestic renewable energy system
• Do not lose faith despite the temporary obstacles – we are not tilting at windmills but doing something really important in applying these new clean energy sources in our world

Finally in the Australian elections this week, may I respectfully suggest you vote thoughtfully for the party who will manage our resources, infrastructure and environment in the most responsible and sustainable way. Do not follow Mark Twain’s exhortation of: “It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them”.

Yours in engineering learning,

Steve 

Dear Colleagues

Thanks for the inevitably bulging mail bag of responses to my previous newsletters. Some very thoughtful engineers. And as per the suggestions, I am trying to add more engineering oriented musings. Three items today:

1. Amazing collection of free engineering software

I am always amazed by the incredible collection of engineering software programs available for free; sometimes as a result of (expensive) government sponsored research or genuinely altruistic engineers out there. We have been working on getting a list together and putting it all onto CD. If you have seen any useful programs which we can add, please email me by returning this message with your list of software programs and we will add this to the list. We will make this available on a complimentary CD or for download in early December as a Festive Season gift.

2. E-learning survey and paper

I have almost completed a short but readable paper summarising the main issues from the over 2500 responses from you guys on the e-learning survey for which I am very grateful. I will definitely get this out in the next two weeks. Some very interesting results on engineering training and skills shortages throughout the world.

3. Why nanotechnology is important to engineers

I always scratch my head when I hear about nanotechnology, of which I freely admit I know very little. Something tiny and presumably irrelevant. Tiny perhaps, but definitely going to make a massive impact on our lives over the next decade. Hence worth looking into. A nanometer (nm) is one billionth  of a meter. A line of ten hydrogen atoms is 1 nm; whereas a human blood cell is 2,000 to 2,500 nm long. This technology can manipulate both matter and life at their most basic levels and lead to enormous breakthroughs. Developments in the field are accelerating with billions of dollars being spent on research in the area. It is a highly multidisciplinary field combining aspects of engineering, physics, chemistry, biology and IT; supporting my ongoing thesis of the need for all engineers to multi skill. Some pundits reckon it will have as great an impact on our lives as electricity, the car and computers combined. There have been some initial (perhaps trivial) examples of nanotechnology in terms of stain resistant clothing, superdurable bowling balls and transparent sunscreens. 

One of the first notable successes in nanotechnology has been in manipulating the magnetic and electrical properties of atoms to store vast amounts of data, making iPods and other storage devices possible. Dr Fert and Dr Grunberg discovered even smaller and denser types of memory storage using spintronics (for which they received Nobel prizes)where the data is stored by manipulating the spins of electrons. Other examples of nanotechnology have been in a transparent coating of a few nanometres thick on glass cutting down on infra-red (ie heat) penetration and allowing more light to get through into buildings. Nanoscale particles of iron compounds can be used to clean up waste sites and break down hazardous organic compounds such as PCBs, dry cleaning fluids and neutralizing poisons such as lead and arsenic. Far more effective than larger iron-based compounds; but admittedly this is still being tested. Getting heat out of the increasingly tiny but faster computer integrated circuits is also a growing area of nanotechnology research and application.

Typical benefits of nanotechnology include: atomically engineered food and crops, clean water supplies, smart foods, cheap energy generation and savings, improved design and production of pharmaceuticals, greater information storage and interactive smart appliances. On the other hand,  many feel that it will widen the rich-poor gap, provide very toxic chemicals and break down the barriers between life and non-life with destructive consequences for humanity.

As with all new technologies, you can ignore nanotechnology and  hope it will go away but eventually I believe there will be the inevitable Tsunami like effect on your life and business.

How can you take advantage of these marvellous (and possibly dangerous) technologies in a positive way?

• Open your mind and read as much as possible on nanotechnology
• Talk to your colleagues about it
• Look for applications in your field – you will be amazed how many applications are opening up on a daily basis
• See how this can transform your business
• Understand and argue about the ethics/morality of some of the applications (eg DNA manipulation)  – we need to avoid this becoming another dirty field of science
• Look for opportunities to gain skills in these technologies where possible to provide support to others

Hopefully the tiny particles that constitute work in nanotechnology are not identified in the following way, as Dave Barry wryly observed:

Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

1. A response from last week’s blog suggested that I was denigrating women. It was unintentional and I apologise unreservedly.

2. Accountants are killjoys and engineers over-engineer

Most accountants are seen as misers and killjoys by engineers. They are seen to spoil the fun we engineers have in undertaking projects -they have an innate desire to measure and to ensure that we under spend on a project. On the other hand, accountants feel that we are obsessed with over-engineering and ignore costs. Rather than do battle we should try to optimize the strengths we each have in an effort to improve the project quality. A project must be environmentally sustainable, aesthetically pleasing, have engineering integrity and have long term financial benefit that recognizes risk. The point I would make is that accountants and engineers need to combine forces, with a focus on the overall vision of the project.

As we all know, engineering is intellectually demanding and is about constructing enormously positive things such as water purification plants in third world countries, supplying electricity consistently, building our streets, bridges and hospitals,  transporting us and our “things”, linking us all together, providing TV and entertainment and sending people into space. But we engineers, with these visions of creating and constructing, often forget to communicate this to our peers, the powers-that-be and the accountant. At times a project may be initially unprofitable when measured in purely financial terms. But long term the profits (both tangible and intangible) are often far in excess of what we had originally envisaged. But we need to communicate this to our financial peers – the accountant - to ensure they buy into the vision and support us in our hour of need - when the chips are down and the powers-that-be want to terminate or chop back.

The construction of the Sydney Opera house is a case in point. Initially, it was marred by enormous budget overruns and fights over the architecture and engineering. The engineering was futuristic and enormously challenging, but resulted in the architect being humiliated by the powers-that-be. However, over the years, no one could have imagined the tourist attraction it would become - an Australian icon. It is an enormously valuable asset and in pure financial terms it has generated far more than could ever have been envisaged all those years ago. Beyond this the intangible benefits have been even more significant and arguably far exceed any financial benefits. If this vision had been communicated more vigorously in the beginning, perhaps things may have progressed more smoothly. Perhaps.

In short we must have a vision of the project and make the accountant part of the project and the vision. Perhaps even  a philosopher on the board could help articulate the vision more clearly.

So what do we do about our next project:

• Keep the overall vision of the project in mind - all the time
• Work on the innate humanity within your engineering soul to make the vision tangible and significant
• Establish a close relationship with the accountant
• Ensure the accountant has a clear idea of the overall vision
• Communicate to him clearly and simply regarding engineering issues; whether it be the electrics/instrumentation or structural challenges
• Understand each other’s fears – we as engineers are traumatized when a structure or project fails – an enormous professional humiliation
• Understand the basics of costings and finance – terms such as NPV and risk should be second nature to you as an engineer

Obviously we are not God working on a project; but this gave me something to grin about:

God is not dead but alive and well and working on a much less ambitious project.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

My heartfelt thanks to Kevin Delbridge, an accountant crème de la crème, who suggested the topic over a few glasses of ale

Whilst trucking through Toronto this week (and getting sunburnt, despite it being October), I was intrigued by a recent problem between two of our offices due to the lack of proper communication. In this so-called connected world with email and mobile phones, communications between people are perhaps even worse than ever before.

A successful engineering firm is based on outstanding communications – both internally and externally; to clients and suppliers – something particularly neglected by engineers as we love technical stuff. Particularly difficult for engineers working in situations where the language spoken is not their own. I always feel sorry when I meet an eminently qualified and experienced engineer from overseas who can’t communicate in the local language (in my case English). His/her employment and promotional prospects are immediately jeopardised. Technical skills date fast and can be updated without too much angst. The ability to communicate, however, is extraordinarily difficult to learn as an adult and reading, writing and listening/talking will remain critical throughout your career.

Some suggestions for engineers bent on improving communication skills. (Which by the bye, I keep having to remind myself):

· Prepare in your mind exactly what you intend to say – it may need some mental practice. Ensure it is expressed clearly – remain focused on your intent. Anything complex will be lost.

· Ensure the person is at the same technical level as you are viz a viz the topic being discussed. If a ‘yes’ is given in response remember this may indicate a complete lack of understanding.

· Guard against this ‘Yes’ mentality. Encourage feedback focused on the issue you are communicating (this clarifies for you that the message has been understood). Converge on a common understanding by reinforcing points and getting confirmatory feedback that you are on the same wavelength.

· Understand the culture and background of the person you are dealing with to help you guard against misunderstandings.

· Use graphics to illustrate points – as engineers this is our stock-in-trade. More so than any other profession (apart from showbiz perhaps).

· Learn from other great communicators. I marvelled at one engineer who grabbed books, pieces of paper, pens, cell phones and other props to build a model on the table in front of us to describe a new process plant construction.

· Track non-verbal cues – looking up at the ceiling or staring blankly at you may mean a loss of comms.

· Listen effectively and actively. Keep an open mind and remain flexible to the ideas of others.

· Watch out for the misinterpretation of words – especially technical words in different languages

· Do not dominate the conversation. Be an active listener. And listen to yourself too - ensure you are not just saying, ‘blah blah….

Above all - be enthusiastic, positive and avoid being boring.

Finally, email – a great medium to communicate with, but sadly abused. It is not to be used for angry messages, humour or sarcasm (unless you know the person) or patronizing instructions. We like to send emails in these circumstances, but face to face meetings are the best. Due to financial difficulties, one of the local businesses down the road fired their 20 employees with an email - to avoid unpleasantness. The consequences for the owners of the business were worse, understandably.

As support, email is great to share complex engineering information. It is a useful means of providing pre-reading material before a meeting. As a follow-up it is a handy means of confirming specific technical data or contractual arrangements.

Think before you send the email – read it again carefully to ensure the message is accurate and without ambiguity either in terms of content or tone. I always visualize my emails being mailed to everyone by mistake and imagine the fall-out.

Face-to-face and the phone are still the best ways of communicating. Think of email as enhancing this. Not as a replacement. Pick up the phone or where possible stretch your legs and speak to the other person.

As engineers, make Anne Lindbergh’s suggestion, your target: “Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.”

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Thanks to John Kline (Leaders Communicating Effectively) of Troy State U.

Dear Colleague

Two things today:

1. Thanks so much for your ongoing stream of comments - every week, I typically get over 20 thoughtful and interesting comments from the 80,000 odd engineers and techies throughout the world who receive this note.. Please keep them coming. I really am grateful for your interest and enthusiasm. Please forward to all your compadres. Thank you !

2. Currently grinding in a tiny turbo prop over the Great Australian Outback, made me wonder about this vast region as a waste storage area for nuclear waste. Probably much to the odd scattered sheep station owner and Aborigine's horror. But it is important to try and take a dispassionate view of nuclear power now due to the shortage of time available. There is no doubt that nuclear power lost most of its credibility some 20 years ago with the massive Chernobyl disaster pouring radiation into the atmosphere  along with the Seven (or Three - I can never remember ?) Mile Island (Pennsylvania) reactor going into melt down . Since then, no one wanted to touch it and the past 20 years have seen enormous wastage of taxpayers' money with tens of billions spent on bailing out lossmaking nuclear power companies.

But in the past few years, with the challenges of climate change, interest has quickened with America having a flood of applications (20 odd) for new plants, Finland building a reactor and Britain moving to revive nuclear power. This is besides the myriad of others such as South Africa developing new plants. Even green-oriented Australia has jumped on board, with the nation's leadership (admittedly, perhaps the last hurrah for John Howard, prime minister before he is overwhelmed by the Tsunami like Labor party) saying this is the only way forward.

On the positive side, nuclear power makes sense with most of the world's oil and gas in the hands of shaky or hostile governments and most of the world's uranium in nice (an irritating choice of word, I do confess) neighbourhoods such as Australia and Canada. The past decade has seen simpler, cheaper and considerably safer designs for nuclear power plants. And lower maintenance and repair costs. Unnecessary shutdowns (apart from the Cape Town reactor which I experienced first hand last year) seem to be a thing of the past with average availability moving from 50% (1950''s) to over 90% today . Gas fired power stations have exploded in popularity. Diametrically opposite to nuclear, gas power stations are cheap to build but expensive to run. And as gas provides the extra power beyond base power, high gas prices set the electricity price. So nuclear plants have become amazingly cost effective and profitable. Coal fired plants pour out pollution whereas nuclear ones have no greenhouse gases to speak of. Wind and solar offers perhaps the best - most palatable solution, but the higher capital costs make it economically tricky at this stage.

On the negative side, nuclear waste is difficult to dispose of. How can one plan for a million years storage of the stuff ? And naturally with the increasing availability of nuclear material, the doomsday scenario of some madman detonating a nuclear device is just too horrible to contemplate. Which we know all too well with the recent New York Twin Towers attack that this is a is a distinct possibility. And there are still some risks with the new nuclear plant designs, which financiers are rather twitchy about. And as engineers, we know, that there will be numerous design and operating wrinkles to work through. This is the nature of the (engineering) beast.

After being aggressively against it (naturally), faced with the horrendous prospect of massive amounts of CO2 pouring into the atmosphere, the environmental lobby has become somewhat divided on the issue of nuclear power and the latest polls indicate that public opinion is moving rapidly in favour of it. I must confess that with my poor knowledge of the topic, I am reluctant to acclaim nuclear power at this stage. Or to gain say it. Conveniently you will exclaim; another fence sitter. But I do have a quickening interest. In common with most engineers I was horrified by the buccaneering approach to engineering many of the world's nuclear sites. But now with the advent of climate change issues, dramatically improved engineering and design, poor location of oil and gas, I don't know that we have much choice.

What should we do as engineering professionals about nuclear power ?

·        First of all, research and debate the topic vigorously as much as possible to understand what the pro's and con's are

·        Put on training and education initiatives in the area to highlight the issues in an objective and informed way

·        Come up with an objective assessment

·        Then harness the engineering leadership to drive this objective assessment forwards to the politicians to act cost effectively

·        Finally, to look seriously at the opportunities for engineering in the area - it is growing fast and provides enormous opportunities for safe and clean engineering

And as the Economist put it: The nuclear industry needs to persuade people that it is clean, cheap and safe enough to rely on without a government crutch. If it can't, it doesn't deserve a second chance.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleague

Three things today:

Engineering training survey. Thanks very much for the incredible response here. Within short order I have had over 1600 completed surveys - I will make the results available to everyone in the next two weeks. Some very interesting and useful comments have emerged - I am very grateful.

We have hounded you too much with emails. The powers-that-be here have decided that we are driving you to distraction by sending you too many emails so we plan to send out only one email every week with my note in it (together with our courses and books). Apologies for the previous deluge. I hope this makes it more palatable although it will make my life more challenging trying to find useful things to comment on more often. Please continue to send me ideas, feedback and suggestions. I will acknowledge them all. I will endeavour to add one technical tip at the end (mechanical/electrical/electronics/instrumentation).

Trust your guts and not always your engineering brain

Tonight, after reading my 10yo boy his bedtime story and fending off some ribald criticism why we still couldn't get his crystal radio (from a kit) to work (some darned loose wire which I can't quite find), I ruefully surveyed the technological carnage of the past few months in our firm.

I am supposed to be the technical expert here, but ..... One of my less technical colleague’s (a jovial Aussie) favourite expressions is: Mate, I don't know sh...from rice pudding - as the engineer, you tell us what we need here. Well, two major disasters illustrate (once again) that advances in technology do not necessarily mean better outcomes. As the so called seasoned professional (one of our instructors used this to justify a pay raise), I don't always make better decisions.

Two examples: Voice over IP (VoIP) is supposedly the name of the game - massive cost savings can be gained as your telephone calls are routed over the internet and incredible acrobatics can be performed in routing calls to wherever you are in the world. The initial cost was significant, naturally ($30k), but with a guaranteed payback within 6 to 12 months it seemed a sound investment. Once the new, beaut system from Cisco (the guys who provide the plumbing for the Internet) was installed, however, we had an almost immediate hacker attack on the telephone system (it is now linked into our computer network) which brought it down for 24 hours while our IT experts tried to work out what went wrong. And we have now found that the quality of the calls is so bad that we have to revert to the good old (expensive) telephone calls. Interestingly, effectively free, Skype, gives us far better quality than our much vaunted Cisco telephone system.

The second technology fiasco, which again shook me to my technical roots, was our computer system. For some 5 years we have depended on a cheap server which had become overloaded and slowed down a bit. We had to manually back up our data onto DVD or tape. Easy, but 30 minutes work per week. Well, the new, beaut system with redundancy (two servers - state of the art with incredible and expensive software), crashed last night with all the mail, shortly after being installed. Even with the backup the information was lost. The IT vendor was left scratching his head saying (inevitably): This has never happened before!

I read about Steve Dell, the billionaire of Dell Computers fame, who flirted with being the technology pioneer, but paid for it financially. He rapidly backtracked and now lets others try the new technologies to prove that they work before applying them to his range of computers.

So in essence - trust your guts and don't invest in technological whizzbangery unless you are absolutely, 100% convinced that they are better and will give a great return. Avoid disappointment and save yourself a tonne of money by waiting until the herd of techno-philes have rushed ahead either crashing further up the pass or eventually proving the technology a sound and better option.

I like what James Klass says about this all: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. Unfortunately both our computer and telephone systems are now simply useless rigged demos.

My problem now is to sort out what we do to get out of this mess. Any scrap merchants out there?

Yours in engineering learning
Steve

Dear Colleagues

We ran a successful (based on numbers and responses at the end, so I hope I don't sound like a used car salesman here) conference on Hazardous Areas (Classifications and Equipment) this week. Very enjoyable meeting so many of my engineering peers who were so interactive, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. An enormous exchange of information done in the papers presented, the tea breaks and over a beer or two afterwards.

But one of the common gripes was still the despairing lack of true worldwide standards in this area; as opposed to the proliferation of standards at the local level (states within a country, in many cases). And one of the themes running through the conference was the slow progress in aligning the North American standards with the "rest of the world" especially in hazardous areas. There are a myriad of standards bodies operating in hazardous areas such as the IEC, ISA, CEN, CENELEC, ANSI, NFPA, NEMA, ASME, IICA (even the US Coastguard, I understand). I was amused by one of the speakers referring to CENELEC as (Committed European Nutcases Eventually Liable to Explode Completely). There is definitely an effort to move closer together but it is very slow.  One would think with the importance of the area that there would be some interest in having complete international harmonization to protect life and limb. Perhaps some of the problems have arisen by Hazardous areas being in a mixed electrical/mechanical and chemical area each governed by their own standards bodies with local country jurisdiction.

There is no dispute that this is an important area to focus on with worldwide standardisation efforts to have one agreed set of standards. One only needs to think of the disasters such as Petrobras - the world's largest oil platform with ten killed; Piper Alpha; BP Texas and the recent explosion at the chemical plant outside London....and so forth.  The picture is changing slowly with one of the behemoths of the world economy China going for the international standards approach (rather than the US specific ones) and this is helping drive the case for true internationalisation of standards (not only for hazardous areas). And with such a number of engineers of enormous goodwill internationally working hard to unify our standards. But they need more support from all of us to really reach international standardisation. We are all commonly united in wanting to protect human life and make our work and home environments safer. So why on earth do we have all these competing standards and interest groups? Besides being confusing, it gives the idea to the general public that we are a disorganised crew.

Two other comments from the conference which I found interesting:

Everyone was absolutely gobsmacked with how everyone made their know-how freely available. I know some of the guys charge thousands of dollars for their advice and they were happily giving detailed advice on difficult solutions at the various breaks and during their papers. Sharing their know-how, tips and tricks built up over years of hard-won experience working in the trenches. It is always so
satisfying that the ethos of the true engineering professional is to share information and expertise freely and openly so that we can design a better product and contribute to a safer world. Bear in mind that there were a number of direct competitors in terms of skills and products and they were happily talking freely. No holds barred. Great to see this
happening.

The other issue was the need for the younger generation in engineering to take up the reins of leadership in driving the new standards, papers and various engineering committees. There is a definite absence of contributions from the younger guys (the generation Y). Now I know a lot of this standard development work can be considered to be a waste of time or tedious and with very little money changing hands for your labours in sitting on these committees. But it is critical to the business of engineering that we have current standards reflecting current practice and we need the younger engineering generation involved. At the risk of sounding mercenary, you will also eventually get valuable recognition eventually by contributing here.

So please focus on unifying standards by your support for an international approach and dare to present a paper at a conference and join an engineering committee. Even in a limited capacity. You will be surprised by how much a contribution you can make and how valuable your know-how is. Let's get out of the thrall of the politicians in each country and go for a truly international engineering approach. After all, we are professionals not politicians.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve Mackay

PS In my next newsletter; I have a really interesting discussion on how to put your engineering brain into overdrive and improve it as if it is normal body muscle. Seriously - I was so impressed by really believable research here.

As I sit in our surfside beach shack contemplating the surfers riding yet another great wave in this stunningly beautiful but remote village in the SW corner of Australia, I've had a good chance to measure up being a mobile (working) engineer for a few days. But as my teenage daughter says so succinctly - It sucks. There are unreliable mobile telephone connections and no web access here (despite being on the best plan).

I recently purchased a ghastly and expensive state-of-the-art PDA (personal data assistant - mobile phone cum email cum PC) which I peck away at and which again is a toy and a parody of my old PC. Its memory is simply inadequate. Weren't they selling Gigabyte tiny memory sticks at the same store for a few dollars? This PDA hasn't got anywhere near this capacity. It has also been totally non-intuitive and has required a few days to be bruised into submission in order to work it - me not it!

Yes, Bob, my very clever engineering friend from New England did gleefully warn me that these 'critturs' are worse than some mule crossed with an ugly coyote, and cussed that they are less productive. Furthermore, the support for the PDA from one of the top retailers was abysmal - and all I wanted to do was just hook into my dear old Google account. I was instructed to search the web to find a forum on how to set up the right port numbers. Que? I am not a rocket scientist and freely admit that I am not an IT guru. But surely when you sell a consumer item, it should be plug and play (not the clichéd plug and pray).

For the past ten years I have traveled the world with a Notebook PC and dial up connection which has worked reasonably well apart from the irritation at the bulkiness of the PC and the hassle of dial up in each location - which is sometimes non-existent (remember that flea ridden Inn in England), or barred (Middle East) or so tortuously slow (an old Russian republic). So when I heard that this great PDA operates in 99 countries around the world (including Europe AND North America) I thought at long last we have arrived at the next generation - mobile engineer II. Not to be.

I feel we are still at the very early stages with the technology and you still have to follow that great principle of Caveat Emptor. Buyer Beware. I do however know with absolute certainty that the next 2 to 3 years will bring us into a smoothly connected, easily effective and mobile world. Sadly, we still have some distance to go. Ah, well. I will have to resort to my quasi mobile life style and hoik Brutus (my venerable Compaq laptop) and dialup connection around for another few years.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

PS Thanks to those of you who respond to these newsletters - I am truly humbled and grateful and respond to everyone and put a selection up on my blog site

Dear Colleagues

After a few week’s gap in my musings, for which I apologise, I am firmly back on deck again. We have been developing a new software product for video conferencing which has drained me of every waking moment, and as you know with software products, budgets and time are rather flexible unless you actively intervene and drive them the right way. 

Two things today. Firstly, my comments on the dearth of leadership in engineering and secondly, some interesting survey results from a pumps conference we ran this week.

Engineering leadership

I have noticed over the years that there is a distinct lack of enthusiasm by engineers and technicians to get involved in leadership in their organizations. Perhaps this is due to the reluctance to manage other skill sets such as marketing and finance where one feels somewhat insecure, and the irritation with being sucked into the “politics and backstabbing” that often happens in larger firms. And perhaps, somewhat contradictory skills required in being a good engineer and leader  – being a good engineer involves being good at and enjoying technical “detailed things”. Leadership requires a different set of skills, as a leader does not have to have detailed knowledge but needs to know where to look to get know-how. Getting people together in a team and getting the best out of them is the hallmark of a good leader. And from a purely mercenary point of view, as Jim Pinto points out: “…you can enhance your job, your results – and your pay – by acquiring some leadership skills.”  As Iaccocca (the legendary and sometimes controversial Chrysler CEO) remarked, there are nine main attributes of a good leader which you must possess to be successful. You must be:

• Curious – one has to listen, absorb and try and understand this “big old complicated” world and vigorously learn on a daily basis
• Creative – try something different and innovative all the time to improve your results. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and getting the same old boring results (and failures)
• Show character – having ethics and morality to follow your convictions and to say I’m wrong when necessary
• Be courageous – taking a position even when it will “cost you votes” in your firm or with your friends and colleagues
• Have conviction and passion – “fire in your belly” and genuine enthusiasm and joy with what you are doing
• Be charismatic – inspire others around you to trust you with their careers and time
• Be competent – a problem solver and hard headed. If your team doesn’t come back to you with their problems, they have probably lost confidence in you, or don’t care. Either way, it is not a good thing.
• Have common sense – ability to think logically in the context of the real world. But as a friend of mine pointed out: “Common Sense is not so common around here”.

And as the inimitable Tom Peters pointed out: “Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders”.

My heartfelt thanks to Jim Pinto, Automationworld, and Iacocca  for their assistance with this ite up.

Pumps Conference

I am always humbled by the enormous number of people that come along to our conferences and how they freely and enthusiastically share their information and know-how. This week we ran a very hands-on and interactive pumps conference in Perth, Australia and the response to an impromptu snap survey of pumping applications was very interesting. Essentially, it is amazing to find out how many pumps failures there are and the lack of a systematic process of condition monitoring to minimize this issue. It will be interesting to compare these results with your plant.

Regards

Steve Mackay

Dear colleagues

We are closer to the end of the year. Did you achieve what you set out to do on the 1st January 2007? Perhaps you never gave it too much thought with all the day-to-day stuff going on. I am composing this over a few welcome coffees in Dubai after a missed flight (we’re doing a little hazardous areas roadshow in the region).

Thanks once again to all you wonderful engineers and techies out there who write to me. Your suggestions/criticisms and help is always gratefully received and acknowledged.

How to avoid engineering career killers – 11 tips

A few thoughts on how to avoid the sabotage of your brilliant engineering career – perhaps something to add to your 2008 New Year resolutions? Thanks to John McKee of BusinessSuccessCoach for his relevant ideas here, which I have modified for our engineering lives (from his IT geek focus).

1. Make sure you have a life plan. This is the number one problem for most engineers and techies. A plan that includes one’s career, along with personal/family and financial goals. Where do you want to be in a year? Ten years? Write it down in a few short sentences and read it every morning before you start your day. An engineer pointed out to me yesterday that he doesn’t particularly worry about money; he enjoys his job and that is all that matters. This is good, but you still need to pay the bills and put something away for when you’re older or sick and want the best for your family.

2. Keep your skills current. You need to keep surfing the engineering wave. What was a key skill yesterday is not necessarily one today. Learning new skills certainly doesn’t mean only attending a course; but informal learning from your peers/books/the internet/on-the-job and then practicing the new found skills. Engineers and techies are in ferocious demand today. But all booms must end, and keep in mind that lower cost countries are developing some extraordinarily skilled people who will compete. Don’t hoard your knowledge but pass it on  freely to others in your organisation. They will reciprocate and regard you highly.

3. Deliver real results to your organization. You have to deliver the goods. Unfortunately putting in extraordinary efforts (such as working long hours) is only part of the story for career success. You eventually have to demonstrate real results which will distinguish you from others when a promotion is at hand. Persistence and innovative thinking are the key attributes to excel and deliver real results.

4. Don’t confuse efficiency with effectiveness. Many people love doing everything quickly by email with no person-to-person contact and don’t bother about talking to real people. You need to talk and communicate in person or on the phone with others.

5. You’re not irreplaceable and unfortunately you are not unique. No matter how much you know; there will be someone out there who is cheaper and better who can replace you. So don’t be overconfident. Listen carefully to others in your company about how you are performing and view your engineering ability objectively. Often difficult to do. As it can be a painful experience. But very productive provided you approach it positively.

6. Learn carefully from the signal in the noise. There is a lot going on around you. An incredible amount to learn. New ideas and new approaches; a lot of them are rubbish. But occasionally you will come across new approaches and new technologies which despite your worse fears, can be applied very successfully and result in remarkably positive changes in your engineering world.

7. Don’t surround yourself with “yes-(wo)men”. Don’t believe people who keep telling you what a wonderful job you are doing. They may be your subordinates or others who have a vested interest in keeping you happy. Look for strong critical but constructive reviews of what you are doing.

8. Give credit where it’s due. Don’t take credit where it isn’t due. It doesn’t reflect well on you. Ensure you praise lavishly for successes achieved by others. People will respect you all the more.

9. Self-promote yourself with panache. A fine line between being a braggart and hiding your light under a bushel by being too modest. Ensure that everyone knows (including your boss) of your successes and achievements using newsletters/case studies/improved design procedures/helpful emails etc. Without being overly immodest, obviously. If you keep ultra quiet, no one will know what a marvelous job you are doing.

10. Don’t lose perspective. Sometimes a design or problem seems intractable. No easy solution can be found. Have no shame in consulting other colleagues for assistance here and other perspectives on solving this problem.

11. Be passionate, enthusiastic and have a positive attitude. Don’t complain and be “political”. Just concentrate on getting the job done with enormous chutzpah and passion. Avoid the blame game. One of the finest and most experienced industrial automation engineers (Martin G.) I know of, has often been given failed designs to fix. He goes about his task quickly and effectively with nary a negative word about the previous incumbent. I always believe that if you are passionate about what you are doing, you will always be eventually successful. If you are not passionate about what you are doing, get an exit strategy sorted out as soon as possible. This is your life.

In conclusion, I reproduce a tiny part of a poem I keep with me wherever I am:

When  things go wrong as they sometimes will/When the road you’re trudging  seems all up hill/When the funds are low and the debts high/And you want to smile  but you have to sigh/When care is pressing you down a bit/Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Yours in engineering learning
Steve

Last week, we had to urgently collaborate in writing a short article with two other engineers – all of us on different continents. This was the  most unusual experience in writing and editing an article in real time. Inevitably, I was on the road. The lot of an engineer, eh ?

The three of us needed to collaborate in writing the document so that the others could read through what I had written as I wrote it. Essentially ‘looking over my shoulders’. I jumped into Google Documents which now has a free web based word processor (and spreadsheet). I gave the two other engineer’s sharing and editing rights and off we went. As I typed up, they chatted with me in the box to the right of the word processor and helped me with my writing. We managed to put together a shade under 1000 words in less than 45 minutes with three graphics inserted in as well. I must confess that I like to think carefully through what I am doing; so real time collaboration with other co-writers in real time doesn’t fill me with much  enthusiasm. But I can see it being very useful for working on something on the road when you can’t rely on having your trusty notebook with you (and/or you want others to work on the document as well). For more information go to:
http://docs.google.com

To get maximum value from this you need to be a google mail (gmail) user. It is a free service. But of course; nothing is really free is it ? You will be ‘paying for it’ via advertising on the google site or whatever.

Obviously if you have a large document (particularly with graphics), it may prove to be somewhat unwieldy to work over a slow internet connection. And of course, the formatting was inevitably lost when I hoisted some Word files in with tables. Ah – the joys of compatibility between the different vendors.
 
This simple example illustrates the increasing growth in web collaboration tools that are appearing on the market. From video conferencing software to sharing of files, planners (diaries) and databases no matter where you are. The stand alone word processor is becoming a thing of the past.

And as Ken Leebow, a well known author, remarks: "...whenever I have an idea or information to place in one of my books, I just go to the nearest computer and log in."

Rgds
Steve

PS As with you, I get a little tired with the increasing flow of newsletters and emails that try and sell me stuff surreptitiously within the supposedly professional message. Don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate you reading my newsletters and we obviously do sell stuff; and lots of it  – training and books. But we try and avoid any hard selling of products within my commentaries. We do follow up after the message with a clear list of where we are running training courses or a sale of our books etc. But we try to ensure there is no confusion between the two. If you disagree with this; please let me know soonest. Thanks.

I remember clearly, when I was in my teens, experimenting with crystal radios and being quite excited with the first crackly reception of the local AM radio station. Or connecting my first telephone up between our shed and my bedroom (and spilling battery acid everywhere - much to my mum’s chagrin). Other moments of excitement were stirring all sorts of interesting chemicals over my Bunsen burner and looking with interest at the litmus paper turning red due to some strange, acidic mixture I had extracted from seaweed. I even managed to manufacture alcohol from a primitive sugar and yeast solution I had fermented. After the taste test I remember lighting it to observe the wavering blue flame. I recall peering through my primitive microscope at some strange, miniscule, swimming creatures from the pond water. And my first construction of a hot air balloon, with its burner roaring – was a momentary success. Then later on, I constructed my first computer, programming in Assembler. Many electronic hobbyists became computer hobbyists (or hackers as they are often referred to today) as a result of playing with these electronics kits/computers. (Just consider the number of magazines that have been dedicated to these hobbyists.) Even before our teens, we were all doing some woodworking, bricklaying and metal working with our little toolkits. I am sure this helped spur us on to go to college and do engineering, where our theoretical knowledge was underpinned by all this practical know-how which we had built up as kids. Whichever engineering you chose, I believe my story is very similar to yours.

Today, I reckon we are down to a tenth of the number of enthusiasts we had in the seventies and early eighties. Most of the magazines have died. Very few kids today are interested in tinkering with soldering irons and electronic kits, dabbling in chemistry or woodwork. Now, after a brief flirtation with an electronics kit, my 9yo boy plays with his Sony Playstation and on the computer and doesn’t have much interest in constructing  new electronics devices.

Why have things changed?

A lot of the fun has gone out of the game of building things; the integrated circuits today are tiny – difficult to solder and a computer program can accomplish a lot of what one wants to achieve.

You can buy ready-made products, manufactured offshore, very cheaply.

The demand for immediate gratification is also proving a little stumbling block for the curious and creative child today. I believe the effort required to experiment, build or create – in an effort to attain an outcome – is considered by children, more often than not, too onerous and unnecessary.
 
Test equipment has progressed well beyond a cheap multimeter and 10MHz scope to a minimum of a complex logic analyzer and protocol analyzer. No 4-20mA current loops any longer, but a communications circuit which you can’t simply look at with a voltmeter.

Technology today is so exciting and cheap. The simulation games played on Playstation are so realistic. Even TV has some attraction with Big Brother proving to be riveting with all the salacious detail of some lost soul’s personal agonies. Cell phones and computers have become so much more appealing than our electronic kits. Although, I remember with such nostalgia and know that hearing my first scratchy AM station with a crystal radio was one of those tremendous “Eureka” moments.

What does this all mean, and what of the future?

Now, before you mechanical types sigh and say “Nothing to do with me”, it does impact on all of us whether we are civil/mechanical/chemical or electrical engineers and technicians.

I don’t believe we need to exclaim despairingly that all is lost and consign this to the  boulevard of broken engineering dreams, but instead should jump in boots and all and seize the nettle (to mix a number of metaphors) and promote these older approaches today. “But why bother?” I hear you saying (somewhat, shrilly though).

Experiential learning, especially when we are young, is the best method of gaining good knowledge, inspiring an interest in a subject and making one competent in it. Nothing can beat this – a concept supported by research. For example, experimenting with an electronic circuit, making it work and then trying to understand what makes it tick is invaluable for cementing our knowledge and giving us an understanding in the physical “universe” in which we work as technical professionals.

There is no doubt, though, that engineering is far more automated today and the throw away culture is very much with us. If your flowmeter in your plant doesn’t work, you generally don’t hesitate to get it replaced – not necessarily repaired. Does this leave us poorer as technical professionals and as a sustainable civilization? I believe so. We should be using more of the equipment we throw out or even passing it onto others who can use it. This does require a good practical knowledge of engineering, however, as distinct from someone who works on a software program or who has merely gained this knowledge during 4 year degree.

Our kids

Our kids are moving away from the engineering and science worlds - it is simply not exciting enough and perhaps they haven’t been exposed to these worlds enough to be enticed. We need to constantly think of ways to make science and technology interesting and riveting.

There is a great program on Aussie TV entitled the “New Inventors” which my 9yo boy loves. People of all ages construct nifty, practical solutions to pressing and irritating day to day problems and submit them for scrutiny. The ideas range from effectively locking a valve out on a plant for safety reasons, to automatically cleaning your house gutters, to energy saving devices to a clever way to ensure you ‘wee’ straight into the toilet bowl as a boy. We need more programs like this.

The schools should also take responsibility for creating science programs which make science real and intriguing.

We need to harness these incredible computer games that are hitting the streets, to ensure they include a  more powerful technology and engineering bias – what about designing your own renewable energy system, online, to save the planet (similar to SimCity) or designing a program by connecting lego blocks which can ultimately control your garden reticulation network or home burglar alarm.

We need to encourage our kids to work with the great, physical materials surrounding us. They could build wooden bridges, construct pumps to create simple, but beautiful fountains. Electronics kits are cheap. Encourage them to troubleshoot the garden reticulation to reduce water consumption. Get them to help us to install our first solar energy panels to reduce carbon dioxide consumption, or give them the job of installing it. The Do it Yourself (DIY) industry is flourishing. You can go down to your hardware store and source the most amazing products for your garden and home at ridiculously cheap prices. And the kits plug together with minimal wastage of time - providing immediate gratification. And a physical result – not just a computer program with concepts that are merely virtual. Fundamentally, working with real physical materials is fun.

There is tremendous (professional) simulation software for electronic circuits today and it would be great to get our kids onto this by distributing a ‘lite’ version for kids. It doesn’t matter if they don’t quite understand all of it. But experimenting with it; and seeing the relevance to the real world would make it interesting and enjoyable.

As Anatole France remarked, oh so many years ago,

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.

Thanks to Electronic Design magazine for an article in similar vein which triggered this outburst of mine.

“The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” can really gnaw at you. How can you make sure that you’re being paid what you’re really worth? Essentially your remuneration is based on the contribution you make to the business you work in. Other factors that impact on pay include: education, formal and informal training, technical experience, size of the company, responsibility level and the part of the country or world that you work in, and finally simply – supply and demand.

Education

During the dot com era, many thought a university degree was increasingly irrelevant -especially in the IT area. There is no doubt, however, that a good degree from a good college is an essential ingredient. If you gain the ability to think logically, read and write competently and are able to commit to outstanding project management skills you will have a good future in the earnings stakes. Interestingly, though, an advanced degree, such as a doctorate, may be counterproductive and scare potential employers off. A niche job often has to be found to fit this level of education and this may be difficult.

Formal and not so formal Training

Most firms appreciate their staff constantly sharpening their skills by attending (relevant and good) courses – formal training. On a more informal basis, however, learning from others in the firm is extremely beneficial and can result in some profound learning. Actively seeking out new know-how from experts and applying this new found knowledge vigorously to new projects is highly regarded. All of these are you investing in yourself and making yourself more valuable.

Experience

This is often the hardest to attain, but often the most valuable. Sadly, the technical part of experience ages very quickly. I would respectfully suggest, however, that the experience you acquire in management will only mature with use and make you even more valuable. Gaining experience overall is essential for job growth. Down the track this is often the one area that will make you stand out when being offered a job.

The part of the country/world that you work in

In Australia’s booming resource sector and on some of the Middle East oil and gas locations, the salaries are astronomical. This is true, but in these environments your costs are higher and your life style can be quite challenging – certainly compared with suburbia in a “nice western” country. So weigh this up carefully. It always fascinates me when I see Indian nationals returning to India and leaving secure US jobs behind for the call of family and perhaps culture.

Business focus

Most technical professionals focus on the issues that are near and dear to them which include engineering projects and detailed technical issues. When assessing projects for your firm, however, it is important to actively ensure that it is aligned with the business in which you are involved. This is a skill which will again enhance your ‘value’ in your company.

And finally – supply and demand

New trends sweep the job market and engineers with skills in these areas become very valuable. When PLCs arrived on the scene in the early seventies, any engineer who could program these beasts and manage an entire engineering project was highly sought after. Now electricians can do a lot of this basic programming. During the dot com boom naturally it was the engineers with a strong Java and database skills who were in great demand. So when you have a highly sought after skill you can charge a premium. But be careful - others are quick to jump onto the band wagon and this can eventually reduce your ‘value’.

How do you gauge your worth?

The inevitable source of information on this are the job boards on the internet sites or employment columns. However user groups – of which there are a burgeoning number -on the internet, can be a great source of information. If all your engineering peers are on $90 per hour; you can bet your bottom dollar (so to speak) that this is the going rate and you had better do something about it. 

Furthermore, many professional magazines publish regular salary surveys and prove interesting reading. The jobs that have large variances in salary are often difficult to interpret, but are nevertheless worth some thought.

To sum up

Overall, I believe having a job is akin to surfing. You can ride a really good wave for a while, but eventually when you hit the shore you have to paddle back and look for the new wave – a wave with different characteristics and twists and turns. So keep your skills broad and deep enough to ride out the changes in the technology that will undoubtedly sweep through your firm. Furthermore watch the state of the market to ensure you understand what is required.

I remember when I left engineering school there was a massive demand for electronics engineers, but then suddenly it was software engineers; and then for those working on  the internet and so forth. Some engineering jobs do, however, seem to truck along well through all sorts of economic storms – such as those engineers working in the (perhaps) less exciting power engineering area.

The advice from the US president Theodore Roosevelt on jobs is certainly an interesting one (a reflection of the Yankee “can-do philosophy perhaps ?):

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.

Thanks and acknowledgements to Patrick von Schlag for his input here.

Recently I received this note from one of my colleagues. I have deleted company names for this purpose.

 “Last week the XYZ company made me a fantastic offer that will provide me with the opportunity to gain tremendous experience and receive a dramatic increase in my salary. I pretty much signed on the spot and joined up. Today my current company made me a counter offer of a 38% increase. However, I have decided to move on - I gave the XYZ company my word.”

Having since discussed this with him I have learnt that he felt that his current company had invested significantly in him with training and mentoring. But had given very little positive feedback on his successes in bringing in more business for the firm and they hadn’t kept his salary on a par with the market. He had had to drive the relationship with little, or at most, irregular feedback. Furthermore, he had an increasing awareness that, considering his productivity and technical skill level, he was being underpaid.

I believe if you are not being treated ‘right’ by your boss or firm, it is important to communicate this to the powers that be, to ensure they know how you feel. Talk to them and explain why you believe you are being undervalued and assess the reactions carefully. Similarly if you manage people you value, look after them before it is too late. In today’s highly competitive job market it is quite possible to lose productive and well-regarded employees. This is even a problem in China where there is a significant skills shortage in engineering talent despite the reported 500,000 engineers graduating every year. (But this is the subject of another rant).

Conversely, if you are an employee who is a little incompetent, or you dislike your career/job or are inappropriately employed, but are determined to stay put; don’t rock the boat. This could result in unnecessary attention directed your way and a potentially awkward situation.

I don’t believe a contented and motivated employee is simply such as a result of an adequate salary or a pay rise every now and again. It is more complex than this. It can involve things such as; a healthy, positive office environment, an employee’s sense that he/she is capable of achieving designated ends, that important experience is being gained and that productivity is noticed and applauded and sometimes financially rewarded.

People can be significantly motivated by positive feedback when they succeed. These can include, on-going and relevant training and mentoring, regular opportunities to tackle interesting engineering jobs and some travel to other sites, where possible, to network with their peers. Just to mention a few.

As Patty Hansen observed:  You create your opportunities by asking for them.

I know I am one of the major culprits here. I have an insatiable desire to keep up with everything happening in our engineering business. I am tethered to my mobile phone and email/web to ensure I keep in touch and track disasters and relatively good news alike. These can range from a training kit destined for Baku in Azerbaijan being lost in New York, to a course receiving outstanding reviews. My wife tends to turn a benign eye to these deviant work related activities of mine until I am found  pondering a work related message which has popped onto my mobile phone at 2am one morning whilst on a camping trip with our children.

There is no doubt that the mobile connected office has enormous power for the engineering professional today. I am constantly amazed by the leverage obtained by both the notebook computer and mobile phone. An industrial automation engineer chuckled as he related just such a scenario last week. He interrupted his bike ride home from work, sat down on a park bench with his computer and mobile phone and conducted a conference with two colleagues in the UK and US and a client in SE Asia, to secure a sizeable engineering contract.

I have no doubt that if you want to succeed in the engineering world today; far more effort than a 40 hour work week is required. There are just too many things to do, sometimes at odd times during the day. One needs to be available to grab these opportunities.

A recent survey (thanks for sending this to me, Kevin Baker) conducted by CareerOne, indicated that 72% of respondents were working longer hours than 5 years ago. E-mail and mobile phones had dramatically increased their workload with 72% admitting that they checked their work related emails on weekends and holidays. Baby boomers were the worst – a stunning 90% admitted to checking emails after hours.

Whilst I am delighted with the additional work related information I receive when traveling and whilst at home, there is no doubt that employees need to extricate themselves from the mobile office in the interests of their sanity and health and to draw the line in the sand to demarcate their personal lives from their work related activities. In ‘my book’, the two priorities in my life are my personal health (I try to keep fit and feel both mentally and physically on top of my game) and my personal relationships (with my wife and two children). Work comes a distant third. One needs to take a definite and regular break from the office and focus on other interests which can be considerably enjoyable – a good book; a plunge in the surf, a glass of wine with dear friends and/or a life partner or perhaps even indulging in more exotic pastimes like sculpturing. I can recall numerous occasions when a long spell swimming at the beach and focusing on the great sun setting over the sea with my family helped me unravel a particularly thorny work related problem - my subconscious busy on my behalf.

As Stephen Covey says:' Most people struggle with life balance simply because they haven't paid the price to decide what is really important to them'.

Admittedly, Steve Wozniak (‘Woz’ to his buddies) of Apple fame is somewhat of an eclectic engineer and definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. Many engineering professionals would be decidedly twitchy to class Woz as “one of us”. My musings today are on why Woz should be considered inspirational to us – whether you be an engineer, technician or a member of Joe Public.

Most of you would have heard about Steve Wozniak  of Apple fame, but here is a quick recap (thanks to Wikipedia.com). He dropped out of UCLA (but came back later to complete his engineering degree) and together with Steve Jobs sold their prized possessions (an HP calculator and a Volkswagen car) to raise $1000 to build their first prototype Apple computer in Jobs’s bedroom (and later in the inevitable garage). Woz remarked on their enormous uncertainty at this point: ‘ We were in (Steve Jobs's) car and he said -- and I can remember him saying this like it was yesterday, "Well, even if we lose our money, we'll have a company. For once in our lives, we'll have a company.”’

 Their  computer was way ahead of its time in terms of simplicity and ease of use. Jobs and Wozniak sold their first 25 computers to a local dealer. Sales skyrocketed and in 1980, the Apple company went public.  The next revision, the  Apple II had high-resolution graphics and sustained the company over the bumps with duds such as the Apple III and  Lisa until the advent of the Macintosh which has done remarkably well for the company. Obviously now with the iPod, Apple is once again roaring ahead of the market with billions of dollars of sales attributed to this one product alone (admittedly, due mainly to Steve Jobs this time).

I believe WOZ, this quirky human, being can act as a tremendous engineering inspiration especially to our younger set.

He:

• Is philanthropic – and pours money into education
• Is brilliantly technical with the design of the initial computers and other projects since
• workED on engineering design whilst still a young sprog at home – well before university
• Thinks laterally (‘foolishly’ ?)
• Knows that the essence of good engineering design is ‘Simplicity and Usability’
• Persisted with design (and a number of failed products) before achieving success with the Macintosh
• Is a risk taker in terms of engineering design and business
• Is imaginative in terms of his design
• Focuses on people’s real needs not some techno-geeky requirements
• Is entrepreneurial - taking on many other ventures over the years

And (for what it is worth)

• Has made a helluva lot of money and has had a lot of fun; yet has strong feelings about ethics and morality. He noted in his book “To us, Dylan's songs struck a moral chord. They kind of made you think about what was right and wrong in the world, and how you're going to live and be.”

He has just written an autobiography "Woz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple and Had Fun Doing It”. It is  easy and enjoyable reading for everyone, including engineers and techies. A nice story. An engineering story. Worth using as an inspiration to our fellow citizens about who our leading engineers are.

We employ an eclectic mixture of experienced engineers, graduate engineers and engineering students both on permanent staff and on contract at IDC Technologies. We run  many courses every day throughout the world; so I am privileged to have the opportunity to talk to the experienced old salts and the young enthusiastic engineering graduates itching to conquer the world. 

But what infuriates me is the redundant content these young engineering students are being taught at college or university. They are still learning how to program an obsolete microchip, how to program in languages no longer used and arcane mathematical concepts which will never be used in industry, among other things.

We are all aware of the throw-away line about 90% of the material taught at engineering school being absolutely irrelevant to our jobs. So why do we continue to teach this stuff ?  I clearly remember learning lots of interesting theory at university engineering school – from esoteric mathematics (remember Cauchy Integrals ?), to calculating the damping of the needle movement of a galvanometer. I must confess that I did sneakingly enjoy the mental gymnastics that went with the learning, but sadly, most of it was irrelevant to my later work. We are told repeatedly that the knowledge gained is not the main issue; the reason for it all is to teach us to think. Hmmmm…

The other challenge that we face is that the material we do learn at engineering school, which is useful in industry, has a very short shelf life. I remember learning BASIC programming. I was quite taken by it and applied it quite successfully, writing some interesting mining programs which generated real results. But today of course, BASIC has largely been replaced by C++ and C# programming languages.

The result of this is that we have ended up with engineering graduates who have spent at least 4 years at college and have virtually no skills which can be immediately applied in the workplace. Essentially they have to be (re)trained at enormous cost and frustration to the employer. I would hazard a guess that for most of them, if they had been plucked straight out of high school having graduated and given a proper engineering cadetship at the firm; they would be in considerably better ‘nick’ to function as engineers after only 2 years.

The other challenge probably is a fault of the schooling system rather than the universities and colleges is that we have many engineers who are virtually illiterate – they can’t write, read properly or indeed do a decent presentation to a group of their colleagues. As far as I am concerned this is one of the most important skills for an engineer. Technical skills wane over time but sound communication skills are difficult to pick up beyond high school.

A couple of years ago we successfully presented numerous courses at an undergraduate engineering level. Over the 4 years we received tremendous reviews and provided a great practical learning experience for the students. We brought real equipment into the engineering school and had real industry practitioners teaching real engineering. But eventually the professor of engineering had to terminate our program on instrumentation and industrial data communications – real nuts and bolts stuff. He sadly confided that this was due to a problem with university funding (they had too many lecturers). They replaced us with a course on instrumentation engineering with virtually no instruments presented by a lecturer who had never worked with instruments in industry. I notice with grim interest that a year or so after this, this professor left the university as well.

I don’t appreciate people who rant about issues (as I appear to be doing here) without proferring a constructive solution. So here is my take on the situation in terms of solutions:
 
1. We need to go to the high schools and promote what good engineering education is about. According to ASEE Prism (2002) Massachusetts fired the shot heard ‘round the engineering world in 2001 when it became the first state in the USA  to require engineering instruction in every grade of its public schools. It was the first time that a new discipline had been introduced into the state curriculum in 100 years.

 
2. We need to significantly upgrade the pay and conditions of university and college instructors so that we attract the finest but with significant industry experience. The pay and conditions have to be comparable to private industry. Academics should be actively encouraged to supplement their pay by working in industry to keep their hands in and to relieve the stress on the public purse.

Don’t get me wrong, however, there are some outstanding lecturers and college teachers. They are absolutely dedicated and driven to do the best for their students and put in enormous hours with tiny rewards. They often do have superb industry experience and credibility and they turn out outstanding graduates. Despite being regularly kicked in the guts in terms of financial cut backs, I am constantly amazed by the passion and enthusiasm shown by these instructors.

The challenge we face is that there are a large number of academics who have no industry experience and are not interested or able to teach current engineering practice. They have never worked in industry and most never will. So what are they teaching our young people ?  The community colleges have similar challenges. Perhaps here it is at its worst as the underpayment of these employees is greatest.

3. We need to measure and market or  advertise to the world, the good university and college engineering departments – those that are teaching outstanding engineering with instructors who have real passion and commitment. This recognition should result in  even greater rewards. We need to ensure that the colleges and universities with  poor records have  assistance to raise their levels.

4. We need to drive the engineering education process to be more entrepeneurial and business oriented and to focus on the real jobs out there. Teach our young people to be business oriented and to communicate in outstanding ways. They need to be taught to be flexible in what they expect from industry when they graduate. As Mark Davis (AFR Sept.2006) remarks – “manufacturers need to focus on high valued added services such as research, design, product development or marketing and distribution in this country while producing the goods themselves at factories in Asia”. The days of an engineering graduate starting work for a good old manufacturing firm and staying put just ain’t gonna happen. It may be manufacturing today; but it may change to design and product development tomorrow.

5. Experienced engineers from industry need to volunteer to present courses at these colleges and universities on real engineering topics. There is a desperate need to provide  real engineering practice to students at university.

6. We need to grab engineering students and offer them vacation employment in meaningful and relevant occupations. Even when they are studying at college they should be apprenticed to a firm doing part time work and enhancing their pay and accumulating real experience. Students will learn early on whether or not they have chosen the right career. Futhermore the good students will come back and work for you and be outstanding company assets.

7. We need to teach our engineering students to think and to search effectively for knowledge. They need to treat knowledge as another commodity; to locate it (via Google, for example), test it for quality and truth, apply it, and then store it so that it is easily accessible to them and their colleagues.

8. Finally, we need to teach students that learning is a life long pursuit. Skills gained today only have a short life of a few years, they then need to look for the next wave and jump onto this.

Just my ha’penny worth today !

Once a team of accountants runs their ruler over your business, you can bet your bottom dollar that first they will be looking at the assets in terms of plant & equipment and stock in the warehouse. Second, they will then look at the intangibles such as software, trademarks and goodwill. There will be scant consideration paid to people – those ‘strange entities’ not on the balance sheet. Or if they are on the balance sheet, it will be in terms of liabilities such as pensions, health costs and medical costs. As for assigning a value to engineers and other technical professionals. Well….

I watch with bitter amusement (and chagrin) how the share price of a company soars when a large number of employees are sacked. Whenever new management takes over, it is always a winning formula to downsize. There are trickier (and longer term solutions) in improving value in the business such as creating new state of the art products, changing the product mix, putting money into R&D to look for new products and looking for product synergies but the winner is invariably downsizing, for that quick fix. There is no doubt that companies and management are under pressure everywhere to improve their return on assets. And with the continued pressure from lower cost countries on wages in the so called first world countries, the temptation is always to take the low road and cut staffing costs. Interestingly enough, while most managers constantly remark that people are their finest asset most often it is simply corporate hypocrisy. The CEO earns many multiples of the training budget, engineers and other technical professionals are dumped whenever there is a down turn in a particular business division.

Admittedly, there is an unforgiveable amount of wastage in any business with technical personnel slumped (my favourite word) in front of their computers performing meaningless designs, for example. But then that is the topic of a future comment.

Peter Drucker, one of the founders of modern management theory, and who died recently referred to “knowledge workers” as being the real name for employees. He felt strongly that people should be treated as assets, not simply as costs and liabilities to be eliminated. The world’s greatest investor, Warren Buffet, noted on May 6th at his company’s annual meeting, that: “I can make a whole lot more money skilfully managing intangible assets (such as people) than managing tangible assets”. He indicated he has been doing this for over 30 years and obviously the results speak for themselves. He is the second wealthiest man (although he has recently given away most of his wealth to charity). Dr Baruch Lev of New York University has also recently calculated that the overwhelming proportion of value is being created by investments in intangible assets (people and intellectual property), not by bricks and mortar type assets.

I am not suggesting for one moment that one should pussyfoot around our engineers and technicians and not measure and drive them to greater success or tolerate incompetence or disinterest. But what I am suggesting is that when these issues arise, they are often due to the defective management or culture of the firm.

But rather than human capital, as the HR people call it, I would like to refer to it as engineering capital and use this to refer to our engineers, technicians and other technical professionals in the firm. Firms are after smart, self motivated, self managing business oriented engineers and technicians professionals today.

So how does one create value in a typical firm with engineering capital ? According to Jim Pinto, Michael Golden and Michael Echols (2006) there are a few important suggestions to improve on engineering capital:

 • Engineers and technical professionals are dynamic assets that appreciate in value in contrast to other assets which depreciate. Invest in them in terms of training and the interesting work that you give them to enhance their skills. Provide mentors and assistance to increase their skills.

• Encourage and recognise new ideas and creativity that come from the youngest, freshest minds in the firm.

 • Ownership of technical professionals cannot be transferred so loyalty to a firm has to be earned. This is done by managing them fairly and not micromanaging. Make the work environment friendly and rewarding to increase the retention of your staff.

• Technical professionals should be treated as the highest level of asset – far more than land, cash and equipment and invested in.

 • Company value can be dramatically enhanced by managing your human capital effectively. The best example is Google which is worth over a 100 billion dollars after only 8 years in operation. Built purely on human capital and eminently measurable in terms of the stock price and morale of the technical professionals working there.

 Dr Michael Echols (2006) notes that looking after our people in our firm is not merely an academic exercise. Up to 2019, the total pool of workers in the 25-44 year old gap will not grow at all in the US. In fact, in many countries in Europe (and indeed Australia), the total pool of workers will decline quite dramatically. The result of this shortfall in engineering capital is a threat to the firm’s very existence. But if we seize this opportunity today to build up outstanding engineering capital in our firms, we will gain an enormous competitive advantage tomorrow.

Well; the great move to our new home up the road was (sort of) completed yesterday. To 1031 Wellington Street. Things had got untenable at our older offices with everyone sitting on top of each other or sharing desks and computers over the day. Hopelessly painful.

Thanks to young Miss Sumi MacNaughton for engineering the move with such panache. Lots of stress and sore backs but everyone jumped in with great enthusiasm.

It is a well recognized truism that science, engineering and technology are critical to economic growth for a country. So it is vital that we see a continuing flow of good engineers and technicians into industry. In 2001, the British Government commissioned an important study into "the supply of people with science, technology, engineering and mathematical skills". The report's findings highlighted a significant fall in the number of students taking physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering degrees in Britain.

Ian Young (vice-chancellor of Swinburne University of Technology) indicates that Australia has a similar problem. A total of 7.9 per cent of all graduates from Australian universities are in engineering, ranking Australia 24th out of 28 OECD countries. Contrast this with countries such as Korea at 27 per cent, Germany at 19 per cent and even Britain at 10 per cent. Comparatively, Australia produces few engineers and the number is declining. This will definitely pose a problem for economic development. Arguably the shortages of good technicians and tradespersonnel are even more acute than that for engineers.

The question on everyone’s lips is why students aren’t going into engineering either as engineers or technicians. It doesn’t appear to be because of money. Careers Council of Australia data shows that in 2003, starting salaries for engineers ranked fourth out of 23 disciplines, behind only dentistry, optometry and medicine, and the physical sciences ranked sixth. Ian Young goes onto say that his experience is that engineering and the physical sciences are perceived by students as being "hard". Good mathematical skills are almost essential for an understanding of science, technology and engineering. He believes the real nub of the problem lies in the early years of secondary school when students develop negative views about mathematics. Finding and retaining gifted and highly motivated mathematics teachers is an international problem. What we need are inspirational mathematics and science teachers of the caliber of Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society.

MIT President Susan Hockfield noted that we need to address the "challenge of interest." "Kids and Americans today fail to be inspired by engineering, by science, and by mathematics," she said, noting that only 17 percent of U.S. Bachelors' degrees are in science and engineering compared to 68 percent in Singapore. She also stressed that to move engineering forward we must "recruit aggressively" women and minorities in this country. "Engineering can't continue to be dominated predominantly by men -- by white men." Rather controversially, but perhaps courageously, Arden Bement (head of the National Science Foundation) stated that if U.S. Industry can find engineering talent in the developing world for 20 cents on the dollar, "they're going to do so, and probably should."

A few action steps are suggested:

• The challenge for us in the western world is to "provide students who offer five times the value added to compete with the lower wage countries"
• We need to inspire our kids at school to go for science and engineering type careers with stimulating courses
• We need a Carl Sagan-quality spokesman to inspire students to become engineers and technicians
• John Marburger (Science advisor to President Bush) also noted that the 98 percent of the students who drop out of engineering cite bad teaching as the cause. We need outstanding training and instructors.

Ensuring the supply of highly skilled engineers and technicians in our countries should be the highest priority if we want to continue to see a prosperous nation in the future.

Stop pouring your money into formal training without pausing to consider the other far more powerful options. The US Bureau of  Labor Statistics (1996), indicated that people learn 70% of what they know about their jobs informally. Not through formal courses. Or training workshops.

According to Jay Cross,  formal training accounts for only 20% of what people learn at work. Was it wisely spent ? In many cases, I doubt it. Our experience leads us to believe that a two day short course is great. The instructor is often good (and sometimes not so good). The transfer of learning is outstanding. Everyone understands the topic. But then no one applies the learning. And after a few weeks, it is all forgotten. So a completely wasted investment by the firm. Great course manuals. Great interaction with other professionals. But that is where the learning stops.

At the end of the day, businesses are after results. Performance. Return on investment. According to Marcia Conner (2005),  ‘the most valuable learning takes place serendipitously, by random chance. Most companies, however, focus only on formal learning programs, losing valuable opportunities and outcomes. To truly understand the learning in your organization you might want to recognize the informal learning already taking place and put in practices to cultivate and capture more of what people learn.’

What is informal learning ?

According to Jay Cross (Internet Time Group), people generally acquire the skills they use at work informally. Talking to others, watching what others do, trial-and-error and simply by osmosis, getting shown or corrected on a task they are struggling to accomplish.
 
The most powerful form of training is to permeate your entire company culture with further informal learning. An example. When a regular problem occurs and the bearing of a machine keeps seizing up or an alarm trips a part of the plant,  identify what the problem is and then try and make the learning experience more generic so that the learning experience can be spread to other instances. Gather everyone around. All 5 technicians, the new snotty nosed graduate engineer, the ancient manager about to retire, the reception lady and then spend 5 minutes showing them what went wrong and how to fix the problem. And then get them involved in the learning process so that they can all demonstrate they understood what happened and won’t forget it. And get them to go and teach someone else in the firm. All informally. At low cost. And yet a very powerful learning experience.

What can you do to get dramatic improvements to productivity with informal learning ?

• List all the informal training activities that are going on in your firm. Publicize them and increase them.
• Permeate your whole work culture with engineering learning – that informal learning is great and valuable. Do this from the top down.
• Build and create informal communities of practice based anywhere from the water cooler to the internet
• Improve meetings to make them learning experiences for everyone.

IDC Technologies is about training. We live and breathe it. We are passionate about it. We run many many training courses throughout the world and train thousands of engineers and technicians every year and have many loyal clients. Short courses. Mostly formal courses. But in some respects formal training must be one of the greatest wastes of money for industry. Most of the results are not measured as far as return on investment and real improvements to productivity, morale, return on investment to the firm. We try hard to ensure our clients do this. But we believe that informal learning has tremendous untapped benefits.

So why not try and put some more effort into your greatest resource. Your people and informal learning. True engineering learning. Technology and engineering training that works. And when you use formal training, ensure that you research both the need carefully and that it is applied to the job effectively.

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

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

Here at IDC we brainstorm foolishly at times when designing new services or products. Initially my rational engineering mind is irritated and uncomfortable. However, when creative impulses intrude, the barmy content which appeared illegal, unsafe and even dangerous, can, with a more chaotic and lateral vision begin to appear quite stunningly brilliant. The trick, when the ideas are flowing, is to get other people to comment on them and to turn them around and see whether they can be made useful and productive.
 
When you are engaged in another meeting examining a difficult problem; be foolish. According to the Entrepeneur magazine, the following framework is recommended:

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

Do not risk life and limb, but as Steve Jobs says: ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish’.