Engineers

"Engineers are taken for granted in the society because we are too good in what we're doing. Everything has worked too well and it is now expected of us to always deliver the same."

This was the honest response from the President of Engineers Ireland to a Q&A last month when somebody in the audience asked about the status of engineers in the society.

This was echoed by a member of our work assignment group in one of the fortnightly meet ups that I attend.

Initially I felt it was a bold statement. I have been thinking about the statement ever since it has been uttered twice. But after a while, I am more convinced that it couldn't be more real.

Living nearby the London Eye, I have the opportunity to admire the magnificent steel structure everyday as I leave and return home. I have seen the wheel in different weather conditions - dry, blustery, wet, snow, hail, etc. It has stood well in those conditions.


I am so used to it that I don't notice it anymore but whenever I see it, I tend to ask myself if the wheel will ever topple over to the Thames. As I let my imagination run wild thinking about the worst case scenario - passengers falling out of the capsules and into the river - I know the likelihood of that happening is next to nil.

Why? Because engineering does not allow that to happen from the beginning!

Unlike banking, engineering failures will cause lives. A slight flaw in precision engineering like aviation will obliterate lives in hundreds in an instant. An oversight in the chemical content of our food will kill within days. A miscalculation in structural design will bury occupants alive in a pile of rubble.

Engineering technology is so established that it is now expected that things will and should be like that. But no one appreciates that.

The President continued, "Post-WW2 engineering was seen as a great profession. People looked up to engineers because they were rebuilding the nation. If you go to Iraq or other developing countries today, engineers are still very much respected. And that was how we were then."

One may argue that we are all economic migrants. People move to where the money is. Clearly if this is happening to engineering, there isn't enough money in the profession.

I am a half believer and half doubter in this.

There are professions that do not pay as well as bankers but still regarded as "sexy" by the society, for example, a pilot. In this case, I don't think salary is an important yardstick but career package is.

Really, with airfares going dirt cheap nowadays, I don't know why are pilots still more respectable than a bus driver. It's £1 to take a bus and 99p to fly to Spain. Now you tell me.

But I believe we can do more with engineers' compensation for the work they are expected to do and risks they have to undertake. If we want to attract and retain the best people in the industry, we have to be able to pay for talents.

In engineering, there isn't a moment we can put safety as an option. Unlike banking, there isn't an opportunity for us to come out with a multi-billion project, collapse it and expect the government to put money and bail us out for our mistakes.

With the high ethics in the engineering profession, there isn't a moment we can say, "just because we can build it safely, doesn't mean we should".

There's only one way for us - we must!