engineer/designer vs builder/laborer

[Ernie Balch]

Hey, I remember that english-metric disaster where the mars bound space craft kept going more off course with every course correction. We built some of the payload electronics for lockheed martin. As I recall Jpl never dreamed that Lockheed was using english units.

[ray hampton]

I am surprise that no one mention the car that require that the engine be remove in order to replaced the sparkplugs

[Tim Pape]

the 9/11 memorial in NY is a good example also. There was a good special on TV about it around the 10th anniversary. One of the issues was the way the design called for piecing together the sections of bronze with welds. That would have called for something like 21 miles of welds. A machine shop figured a way to scribe the bronze and then bend them to reduce welds altogether.

The biggest issue though was about heat. They bronze plates that had all the names of the victims etched in it reaches over 200 degrees in the summer sun, which obviously would be a safety hazard to all the people touching them. This forced the fabricators to build miles of copper tubing placed behind the plates filled with glycol, in a manner just like radiant heating for your house. It added lots of time, money, and complexity to the project.

[Kevin Groenke]

"Progressive" designers and architects have a pretty bad rep with builders/laborers who have to execute their visionary work. As an intermediary in design education (shop guy) I deal with this everyday: I see how it happens, even how it's formed (this week our architecture students, who have disturbingly little materials and physics background, are "designing" a 2000' cantilever). Of course there are abject failures - Leaning Tower of Pisa, Galloping Gertie, Titanic, Hindenburg, - but if designers never pushed the known, conventional limitations of engineering, manufacturing and construction where would we be?

Yeah, Wright was notoriously difficult to work with and many of his designs are problematic, but he's also heralded as a genius and is the most recognized architect in the US, maybe in the world. Why? Because his work is unique, pushed the limits of materials, techniques and capability and is instantly recognizable and aesthetically beautiful (unless you don't like it ;-).

Others? Divinchi, Gaudi, Brunelleschi, Calatrava, Tesla, Edison, Bell, Jobs... Would I want to work for any of these guys? Heck no, "That's impossible man".

Projects? Hoover Dam, Panama Canal, Channel Tunnel, Millau Viaduct, Bejing stadium.. I doubt if anybody who WORKED on any of these projects would have believed they were possible were it not for the BIG THINKERS who envisioned them. If those Designers had given up when they were told their ideas were impossible, we'd all be living on one side of the river without electricity.

Frank Gehry's first buildings - derived from napkin sketches and tinfoil models - were notoriously difficult to build. Now, after YEARS of investment and evolution, Gehry's office has developed a powerful software package the vastly simplifies design AND production of their work and lot's of other work. Last year I visited a shop that LITERALLY downloads gcode from files shared with Gehry's office into a multi-axial sheet metal former to produce the steel studs employed in some of the work. There are tens of thousands of these unique elements in a building, all the pieces are sequentially packaged and bar coded with GPS coordinates. Is his work perfect? Absolutely not, but it is an amazing piece of design and engineering. Like Wright, many of the problems with Gehry's designs are a result of the contractors failing to execute the design as intended... probably because it was "impossible" (within present parameters) because the designer was ahead of the engineering/production capability.

When Ives/Jobs designed the first iPod, iMac, iPhone could they be built?, Probably not, the "visionary designers" pushed the engineering and production capabilities. Successfully? Most people seem to think so.

Of course a "universal genius" who is a designer, engineer, marketing genius, computer scientist, etc... could change the world alone. Of course, making stuff (especially BIG stuff) is collaborative, so "people skills" (which most of the above are not known for being particularly strong at) are very important too.

millau1.jpg

[Brian Elfert]

the 9/11 memorial in NY is a good example also. There was a good special on TV about it around the 10th anniversary. One of the issues was the way the design called for piecing together the sections of bronze with welds. That would have called for something like 21 miles of welds. A machine shop figured a way to scribe the bronze and then bend them to reduce welds altogether.

The biggest issue though was about heat. They bronze plates that had all the names of the victims etched in it reaches over 200 degrees in the summer sun, which obviously would be a safety hazard to all the people touching them. This forced the fabricators to build miles of copper tubing placed behind the plates filled with glycol, in a manner just like radiant heating for your house. It added lots of time, money, and complexity to the project.

Is there any way to not have a dark metal heat up in the sun? I'm not an engineer, but it seems that the only way to avoid the heat issue would have been to use a different material and/or a much lighter color. I also seem to recall something about the original design for heating/cooling the panels didn't work and they had to pull all the panels back off to rework the heating/cooling.

The shop that won the bid for the panels was just a small shop. They subbed out a lot of the fabrication work because they simply didn't have the required machinery. The design they came up with supposedly saved millions of dollars compared to how the designers thought the fabrication would have to be done.

[Conrad Fiore]

I must give props where they are deserved. The panels for the 911 Memorial were completely fabricated by Service Metal Fabricating in Rockaway New Jersey. SMF is one of my vendors for laser and waterjet cutting and I can tell you they did all the work themselves. The attached link is a video that was featured on NOVA. http://www.servicemetal.com/news/911...orial-plaques/

[Bryan Morgan]

Of course there are abject failures - Leaning Tower of Pisa, Galloping Gertie, Titanic, Hindenburg, - but if designers never pushed the known, conventional limitations of engineering, manufacturing and construction where would we be?

I thought the Titanic turned out to be redeemed recently. Something about the captain speeding up and forcing a bunch of water into the ship.... had it just stayed put or went slow everything would have been fine. Somebodies deathbed confession or something I seem to remember...

[Brian Elfert]

KC Fabrications was the company that was awarded the contract for the parapets at the 9/11 Memorial. KC won because they proposed folding the metal instead of welding. KC Fabrications used Service Metal Fabricating for the machine work.

[Susan Kahler]

Dilbert gets a LOT of play out of this topic...

[John Coloccia]

The thing is that no one tries to screw up projects. Everything seems very reasonable at the time. The main problem is that decisions are often not made with full information, and there's massive mistrust between management and engineers. Why?

engineer: It will take 4 weeks
management: But I need it in 2 weeks
e: I can't do it...it won't be right
m: can you get it close (he's thinking close as in "close enough but improved later on")
e: I can maybe do something in 2 weeks ("he's thinking bandaid, and redesign later...redesign will now take 6 weeks to retrofit)
m: Ok...let's do it

A year later all anyone remembers is that the engineers said it would take 2 weeks, the screwed it up and it took 4 weeks and never really worked right anyhow. So no there's less communication and less trust, and the engineers are pretty smart so next time the conversation goes.

e: How long do I have?
m: 2 weeks
e: OK!

Because he knows there's no point in trying any harder than that. He won't win and when it doesn't work it will be his fault anyway. When I was managing, I made very clear that I don't care how long it takes but it will be done right. If we needed to cut a corner, we documented it and fully documented the consequences. I never hung anyone out to dry and always took the lumps when we messed something up. It wasn't altruistic...it was to make sure that my engineers would never hang ME out to dry by outright lying to me when we were under pressure. I've done it too just to get an idiot manager out of my office, and I didn't want to be the idiot!

It's easy to keep communication going when everyone's on board but that is so rare. It really takes someone, somewhere, in the chain to just break the pattern and stop the flow of BS. Then everything works from him on down. This is usually way too far down the chain. It's hard to really blame anyone other than the CEO/President/Owner. From him on down, everyone is just trying to keep their jobs and feed their families. Ultimately, they set the tone and the focus. Honey flows down hill too, not just the other stuff.

I've worked for and dealt with really well run companies. Invariably there's a pattern of the guy that is knowledgable is also the guy that can make the decisions...even if he's not the manager, he's clearly the one that says "this is how we do it" and everyone falls in line. It's the same pattern time and time again. I can always tell the poorly run companies when the guy I'm dealing with is obviously the brains behind the product, but he's always "getting back to you" later. What he's really saying is he's going off to ask the permission of the idiot he works for (who obviously doesn't trust him). I ALWAYS know when things aren't going to go well with a vendor and this is a serious red flag.

[Myk Rian]

Google engineering disasters. A whole lot of info comes up.

[Ricky Rater]

Curtis,

I'm a 10 yr engineer at an oil refinery with environmental, maintenance, project and reliability experience. Here is an experience of mine:

Once upon a time I was a Plant Engineer (sometimes known as a maintenance engineer). We use this position as an entry level engineering position and assign the youngsters problems to solve.

We had an atmospheric condensate drum which was venting excessive steam out of the p-trap drain. A process engineer spent about 5 minutes on it and determined that the p-trap seal was getting siphoned out and she recommended that we drill a hole in the top of the trap. She did not walk this down in the field nor did she discuss her idea(s) with operations. Kudos to young me... before we implemented her idea, I walked it down with an experienced operator. He had some theories and we tested some of them. Wouldn't you know it, we blocked in one of the valves which dumps into the condensate header and the p-trap stopped blowing through. Long story short - the steam reheater whose valve we blocked in had been reconfigured some years past (before we were rigorous with change management) from a 20 psig steam user to a 150 psig steam user. The simple fact was that the condensate header had too much pressure on it for the p-trap to restrain! If the story ended there, you'd congratulate me on a job well done, but I had more to learn.

Next I started formulating alternate solutions. Since I didn't trust the process engineer any longer I didn't consult her or anyone from her discipline. We offered management two solutions. Option 1 Build a new medium pressure condensate header at considerable cost. This was my recommendation. Option 2 Install a steam silencer and vent off the material from the higher pressure steam reheater - much more economical. My mistake was assuming Option 2 would actually work. Of course management chose the $10k option over the $200k option - especially since I was confident both would work (well "pretty sure" on Option 2). Problem was, I assumed the material vented from the steam reaheater would be vapor (steam). It wasn't, of course, since I was tying in downstream of the control valve whose job it is to behave like a steam trap to maximize heat transfer. I still have responsibilities in this process area and am infamous for installing the "hot water sprinkler." One of the engineers who followed me finally "fixed" it by installing a larger atmospheric vent on the condensate drum.

Some other thoughts:
1. Any good project will involve all stakeholders in the front end engineering efforts. For us this includes Environmental, Safety, maintenance (craft), reliability (what probability of a successful run do we expect over X years), operations and various technical experts. Continued involvement of these team members is necessary all the way through the execution and startup of any given project. Entire careers are built upon effectively bringing together diverse perspectives to build the best possible project. You'd be surprised how many problems can be avoided in a short amount of time when you bring together a hundred years' worth of experience into one room.
2. Indeed any change in my industry (and many others) as defined by OSHA requires a cross functional group to perform a risk analysis upon it. Cross functional reviews are the key in my opinion to preventing theory vs. practical application errors. When engineers do practical application hobbies or have past experience in a craft, it makes them more valuable because they can (and often do) serve in multiple roles on a cross functional team. Same goes for experienced engineers - they've been there and seen it, so they have a broader library of knowledge to draw upon when looking for potential failures or design errors. I have a person working with me who is new to his role as a reliability engineer - he is already head and shoulders above his peers because he spent time as a mechanic in the Navy - practical experience, even when it's not "engineering" experience, is priceless.
3. In my industry, learnings are institutionalized via sustainable systems such as specifications and standards. This maximizes the value that young, inexperienced engineers can leverage, although they should never just be turned loose without mentorship. It also brackets the decision rights that craftsmen are allowed to exercise - decisions outside of reviewed and approved standards or design packages must be elevated through engineering and often will be re-reviewed at the cross-functional level of a project team.
4. Technology can be leveraged very effectively to bring the practical people and the theoretical people all onto the same page. Complex models of varying process conditions may be needed. Computational fluid dynamics can be used on a targeted basis. 3-d CAD is beneficial to help Operators and Maintenance crafts to visualize what it will be like to operate and work on the equipment. All of these are, among other things, communication tools.
5. Finally, the vision and mission of the organization that the engineer and craftsmen are working within influences the success or failure of every effort. You've seen many examples in this thread about how management applied time pressure without regard to the quality impact. Decision rights must be at the right level. Managers must be facilitators of good decision making and able to challenge without stifling good engineering or maintenance practices. Since you're in English class and not getting a MBA I won't get further into this - but my belief is that this is the biggest area for improvement for most organizations.

Hope this helps.

Ricky

[Moses Yoder]

I worked in a kitchen cabinet shop for about 12 years before gradually being put into a position where I was a kitchen cabinet engineer. Now I just make working drawings and specify parts and hardware for producing cabinets. Over the years my bosses have hired numerous people to help me, and it never ceases to amaze me how much lack there is in a $60,000 college education. "Assistants" who get paid more than I do because they have a "college education" come to me asking me how to build something, and they don't even know what questions to ask. I think every engineer should be required to work at actually fabricating in the field he is going to be working in for at least 5 years before being handed a degree.

[ray hampton]

I worked in a kitchen cabinet shop for about 12 years before gradually being put into a position where I was a kitchen cabinet engineer. Now I just make working drawings and specify parts and hardware for producing cabinets. Over the years my bosses have hired numerous people to help me, and it never ceases to amaze me how much lack there is in a $60,000 college education. "Assistants" who get paid more than I do because they have a "college education" come to me asking me how to build something, and they don't even know what questions to ask. I think every engineer should be required to work at actually fabricating in the field he is going to be working in for at least 5 years before being handed a degree.

This idea of your do not make sense to the EGG HEADS or they would thought of it a century ago in a way so that it would be in action and practice in every factory

[Dan Hintz]

I worked in a kitchen cabinet shop for about 12 years before gradually being put into a position where I was a kitchen cabinet engineer. Now I just make working drawings and specify parts and hardware for producing cabinets. Over the years my bosses have hired numerous people to help me, and it never ceases to amaze me how much lack there is in a $60,000 college education. "Assistants" who get paid more than I do because they have a "college education" come to me asking me how to build something, and they don't even know what questions to ask. I think every engineer should be required to work at actually fabricating in the field he is going to be working in for at least 5 years before being handed a degree.

No amount of money can buy common sense, so no matter where an engineer got his degree or how much money was spent getting it, how to handle a new situation or design will depend heavily upon the engineer's ability to think for themselves. Drawing upon experience helps, but again, you can have all of the book knowledge in the world and not truly understand a concept... the authors of those books did the thinking for you.

I also find it hard to believe a new "engineer" would have difficulty in designing a cabinet. What they likely have a problem with is no idea about what the appropriate types of mounting methods are available to them, proper joint construction, etc. That comes from experience, something you gained over 12 years watching (and being commanded by) others. What you will likely find, though, is once you give a true engineer an assignment after gaining a bit of experience and ask them to solve a problem you haven't yet solved yourself, they'll come up with some ingenious solutions.