Opinion piece submitted by Donald Vaughan FIEAust CPEng NER, keynote speaker at the Graduate Edge – Develop Safe and Sustainable Solutions session.
Safety and sustainability are an integral part of engineering design.
Engineers love ‘isolating’ a problem. We are adept at externalising complications that have little bearing on our work.
As we design, we need to be aware of the impact of our decisions, take off the ‘blinkers’, and ensure that our work does not unduly affect the economy, environment or community.
This is a confronting requirement.
As an inexperienced engineer just starting my career, I relied on others to do this for me. I was part of a large organisation and allowed myself to be sheltered, just doing the work allocated to me. Slowly, as my influence and independence grew I started to take control of design outcomes and that’s where the trouble can start.
One example that springs to mind is a fairly innocuous PLC design I worked on to control two compressors. This involved replacing a relay based system that controlled the pressure in an air receiver using main and backup compressors. As the duty of the two compressors would be uneven, I wrote some code to automatically swap the duty periodically.
The design was successful and the code worked. However, as I was speaking to the operator one day, he asked me why the run hours between the two compressors were so close. I explained it and he said “Hmph, that used to be one of my jobs to monitor the run hours and swap them over”.
I had not considered this in my design. I used the technology available to achieve an operational requirement but didn’t extend my thinking to the impact this might have on the efficient use of labour.
A small, perhaps trivial example of anticipating the effects of engineering design, it illustrates how easy it is to overlook the unintended consequences of our work.
We need to broaden our vision
Engineering design is complicated and that’s why we love it. If we make it slightly more complicated, mightn’t we love it more?
Taking into account the wider effects of doing, implementing, operating and decommissioning engineering design work only enhances its quality and the value that it brings to our clients and the community. It shouldn’t be an add-on or outsourced to another party.
As engineers, we must take responsibility for the broader effects of doing our work and the work itself.
Image: iStock
Donald Vaughan will be speaking at the Graduate Edge – Develop Safe and Sustainable Solutions session on Wednesday 10 May in Hobart. This session will explore the economic, social and environmental impacts of engineering activities and how to anticipate these as a graduate engineer.