Engineers contributing to our every-day lives have been recognised in the announcement of the 2015 South Australia Individual Awards.
Andrew Skinner FIEAust CPEng was announced as the SA 2015 Professional Engineer of the Year. In announcing the award, the judging panel acknowledged Andrew's significant contribution across the span of 40 years to the renewable energy industry and the community. Engineers Australia interviewed Andrew on key achievements and his advice for burgeoning young engineers.
Current job title and function?
Engineering Director, Measurement Engineering Australia (MEA)
Why are you an engineer?
My father was an engineer and a good one. He had six kids, and of them I got "the knack". He could make anything and fix anything; so can I.
At various times over a long engineering career, I've wanted to be a musician, a farmer, a zoologist or just unemployed so that I could rest up. But engineering is in my DNA; I'm stuck with it. About 2% of the population have this curse upon them. Sometimes we're denigrated as 'nerds' but we built the modern world.
What are you working on now?
Companies tend to work on what keeps them competitive in the current market, so I'm busy building gadgetry for the Internet of Things, which is all the rage. What I'm secretly working on is another thing altogether; I'm trying to get living plants to talk to the humans in charge of irrigating them.
My field is environmental measurement; it’s dominated by pretty ordinary technology that measures soil moisture and climate for farmers. These are surrogates for what a grower really wants to know, namely, "Is my crop going into water stress?”
Essentially, I've designed an extraordinarily sensitive thermal diffusivity sensor that is embedded in the sap-conducting tissue of vines or tree crops. It responds to changes in tissue water content and sap flow. There is an associated vapour pressure deficit sensor to measure atmospheric demand on the crop's canopy. The sensor works by tracking the plant's water delivery response against atmospheric demand and seeing if it falls off under conditions of crop water stress.
Any advice for young engineers just starting their career?
Great! You've finished with University and now you can relax and have a life, right?
Sorry, but you have forty years of engineering ahead of you, and half of what you have been taught will have changed within five or six years, depending on your discipline (mechanical engineers have longer half-lives, software engineers will be out-of-date in less time than it took them to get their first degree). Technological advances are changing at such a rapid rate that you will need to put in extra hours of study to stay up-to-date in our ever evolving environment.
What makes SA such a great place to be an engineer?
SA is a great place to live, however Adelaide is no Silicon Valley, and we don't have the sort of funding capital available (apart from AusIndustry, who are great) that supports the sort of entrepreneurial activity that drives technology and makes for an exciting and dynamic engineering community.
The tyranny of distance still applies; it's tough being a world-class company when you're down the bottom of the world. However, Australians are great adopters of new technology and willing to give all sorts of things a go.