I was taken by two articles in the Fall Newsletter of APENS, The Engineer, that could be summarized by the following comments: “…engineers found guilty of misconduct...” and “…skills engineering schools should teach“.
(This does have something to do with forensic engineering as noted below)
The article about skills caught my attention first. It was entitled, The Top 5 Skills Engineering Schools Should Teach, and was written by Natalie Cornelius, P.Eng. I agree with some of what Natalie writes but not all. She identifies the following skills:
- Written communicatoin
- Attention to detail
- Networking, and/or how to call someone you barely know and get information
- Skillful negotiation
- Flexibility and adaptability
I agree with the first, believe the second is being addressed well enough in university now, and believe the remaining three are not fundamental enough for a university program in engineering.
I believe a skill that Natalie might have included was Verbal Communication. There’s also another skill that, in some form or another, might be taught that I mention below.
The reason for my views on the article are beyond the scope of this posting. But, I do think Natilie’s views on engineering curriculum could have been more helpful if her article had also reflected the results of interviews with senior engineers in engineering disciplines, fields of practice, and life experiences other than her own.
The article about engineers found guilty caught my attention second. It was entitled, Engineers who declared Lake Algo Centre Mall structurally sound, found guilty of misconduct in 2010. This is the Elliot Lake Mall that collapsed and that I blogged about a few weeks ago (Cause of roof collapse at Elliot Lake, published July 10, 2012). The article in the APENS newsletter was originally published in The Globe and Mail on Saturday, July 14, 2012.
It was encouraging to see APENS carry this item about professional engineers who appear to have slipped up
It’s interesting that the engineer’s misconduct had something to do with engineering design and inspection. These were areas that I thought in my blogging were deserving of hypothesizing, particularly construction inspection.
I can’t help but think of the pressure some practicing engineers are under to do the right thing in their work. Few if any knowingly do the wrong thing but we are human and occasionally let our guard down and inadvertently do the wrong thing.
Those of us who are in private consulting practice learn early on to be careful of some clients – I could identify but won’t – who leverage the smallest amounts of capital to dizzy levels, and the professional engineers who are under pressure to produce inexpensive designs and are swept along in this leveraging.
I’ve thought for some time – months if not two or three years, about the subtle pressure professional engineers are under who work for commercial firms and fiscally responsible bureaucracies where the bottom line rules. Most professional engineers work for organizations like these. To some extent, engineering professionalism is threatened by the tyranny of the bottom line.
This conflict between the bottom line and professionalism has troubled me enough that I’ve thought to suggest to Chris MacDonald that he blog about ethics in the professions. Chris – I count him as an acquaintance, took his course on critical thinking one time, and had some contact with him since – is a professor at Ryerson in Toronto, formerly with Saint Mary’s University, who blogs about business ethics. Chris is extremely well recognized world wide in his field. I think professional ethics is a fertile field for a chap like him with his insight and knowlege.
In any event, to wrap this up, and get back to the two articles I saw in the APENS newsletter, I think a course worthy of an engineering curriculum would be one on professional ethics and the pressures on these ethics in a capitalist society. A raising of an awareness of these pressures on the part of the young engineer .
In Natalie Cornelius’ article, as I would revise it, I would add a course on Professional Ethics after the course on Verbal Communication that I suggested adding earlier, and this would be the last item in the list of skills.
Some of the young engineers will practice forensic engineering after they get a few decades of experience under their belts. I can tell you that ethics plays a particularly important role in forensic engineering. There is not a little pressure on a professional engineer to advocate for the client. There is also the normal pressure of a human being identifying with the underdog after the cause of a failure is known. These pressures threaten the professional engineer’s need to be objective as required by the courts. A course in ethics would raise the young engineer’s awareness of these pressures and help him/her resist them.
References
- Cause of the roof collapse at Elliot Lake. Published July 10, 2012