Category Archives: Soapbox

Safety first!

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cornerMost of us walk up and down stairs at home without a second thought and often without holding the handrail. It’s a personal choice to hold the handrail or not. However, for some when you are at work it is no longer a personal choice but a health and safety rule. You must hold the handrail and in many organisations you are expected to politely ask visitors to do so. This is justified on the basis that trips/slips and falls are the most common sources of workplace injuries accounting for 40% of serious injuries. For managers it is about managing risk and reducing costs.

Risk is the probability of something happening multiplied by the consequences when it does happen. Many of us subconsciously calculate risk when we make decisions in everyday life. The consequences of the aircraft crashing on the way to your holiday destination is very serious, if not fatal, but the probability is extremely small so that overall the risk is acceptably low. We make lots of risk assessments in our personal life but as soon as an organisation gets involved and feels that it might be liable for the consequences then our freedom of choice is eroded quickly. Hence, the instruction to hold the handrail on the stairs. However, the equation is changed when the cost of reducing the risk involved in an essential or profitable activity is too high or perceived to be so. A simple example would be being free to stand on a platform within half a metre of a passing express train. It would be too expensive and probably impractical to install railings or remove everyone from the platform. However, at least we have platforms and are not allowed to wander around on the track; that would be really dangerous with both a high probability of being hit and fatal consequences as the Liverpool MP William Huskisson found out at the inauguration of the first scheduled passenger train service on September 15, 1830. When the train stopped on the way from Liverpool to Manchester, he got out and walked down the track to the Prime Minister who was in the next carriage to enthuse about the service and he was killed by the train going the other way. There are easier ways to get a street named after you, not to mention a town in Australia!

Source: http://www.workplacesafetyadvice.co.uk/common-injuriescauses-accidents-work.html.  BTW – according to this website, the finance is the safest sector in which to work and agriculture the most dangerous sector.

Photo credits: Sarah & CharlesPicture8

Dream Car?

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f1When you are young most people would like a car with the performance of a racing car. When you get a little older and have children then you want something with the strength of an armoured personnel carrier in order to keep them safe. By the time you are old enough to have grandchildren, you are worried about whether the world’s resources will still be round for them and you would like a car with the fuel efficiency of the ETH PAC Car II which at 15,212 mpg, or 0.01857 litres/100 km holds the world record for fuel efficiency. In my case the compromise is a Volkswagen Golf, which is an example of the engineering conflict resolution between cost, structural integrity, performance and sustainability discussed in last week’s post [‘Conflict Resolution’ on June 25, 2014].

My colleague who lives in Zürich has an alternative resolution to the conflict. He does not own a car. Instead he has bought shares in a car sharing scheme, Mobility. If he needs a car then he selects a car on-line from those available in the nearest car-park and there 2500 available from 1200 in Switzerland. When I visited him a few weeks ago he picked up a sporty BMW 1 series by using a smart card in his wallet to open the car and said if he had been on his own then he would have taken the little SMART car parked next to it. As my Swiss colleague said if you are the car you drive then he can be a different person everyday.

Conflict Resolution

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conflict pyramidEngineers need to be experts in resolving conflicts…

Every man-made device that moves required energy to make it and uses energy when it moves. Heavier devices have greater inertia than small ones and hence more energy is needed to set them in motion – think about peddling an old-fashioned steel-framed bike compared to a modern alloy one. So, designing for sustainability requires engineers to minimise the quantity of raw materials and energy used to manufacture a device AND to minimize its weight if the device moves as part of its function.

Now, here comes the conflict.

Sustainability also implies that devices should have a long, maintenance-free service life so that resources used in maintenance and replacement are minimized. Service life is usually limited by fatigue and, or wear and the probability of these failure mechanisms occurring can be reduced by lowering stress levels. However, stress is inversely proportional to cross-section area and so can be reduced by adding material, i.e. increasing the mass of the device which will also increase its inertia, or resistance to motion. The probability of failure can be reduced by using stronger, more sophisticated materials that are lightweight and almost always more expensive, e.g. composites. Customers also want performance and additional expense might be acceptable if it is accompanied by additional performance – some people will pay for a carbon-fibre frame for their bicycle. Elegant engineering design requires resolution of the conflict between cost, safety and reliability, performance and sustainability.

This is why engineers are trained in conflict resolution or as it is more commonly known: problem-solving.

The Charismatic Engineer

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stanfordcloisterEngineers do not have a great reputation for being charismatic leaders or communicators. In both print and speech we have a tendency towards being precise and concise, which often also means boring. However communicating is probably the most important part of the job for many engineers and for this charisma is important. The German historian and sociologist, Max Weber observed that people voluntarily comply with three types of authority: traditional, rational-legal and charismatic. Traditional authority is the type vested in age-old rules and conventions; so not much chance of engineers possessing much of this type of authority. Rational-legal authority derives from the bureaucratic or administrative system, the ‘laws’ enacted by it and their implementation by those appointed within the system; so again not much hope for engineers except within some engineering organisations. Charismatic authority is possessed by individuals who appear to be extraordinary or have ‘at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities’. I think engineers have a decent chance of this last type of authority. As a profession, we have pretty extraordinary powers. Just look at our ability to provide round-the-clock water, food, energy, shelter and transportation in densely populated cities. Never mind adapting systems to cope with natural disasters or designing vehicles to land on Mars. So as individuals we need to develop exceptional qualities of integrity and communication, if we want society, or even just the CEO, to listen to and accept our advice.

Many engineers will shy away from the line that I have expressed above, preferring to hide in the test lab or behind their computer screen. This is in part because engineers are trained as problem-solvers and solving problems often requires a degree of solitude and silence that is not compatible with high profile communication. This conflict is shared by many scientists, who are often judged by their publication profile rather than their scientific achievements in part because it is easier to count publications that to assess the significance of achievements. Some of us enjoy the solitude of writing blogs, lectures and papers. I find the process deepens my understanding and goes a long way to resolving the conflict between communicating and problem-solving. However, it can be difficult in a modern professional life to create the necessary calm for problem-solving creativity.

Marily Oppezzo and Dan Schwartz at Stanford University have shown that taking a walk can stimulate creativity. So perhaps monks knew this when they built magnificent cloisters adjacent to many great cathedrals and monasteries in Europe. However, you don’t need a beautiful set of cloisters, the Stanford researchers found that creativity increased by the same amount whether their subjects strolled in Stanford’s lovely leafy campus or walked on a treadmill opposite a blank wall. So next time you feeling challenged by the preparation of a charismatic talk or you are stuck solving a problem, take stroll. The Stanford team found that eight minutes was enough to produce an appreciable improvement in creativity.

And oh, yes. Don’t forget to leave behind all your electronic devices when you walk. Their silence is crucial. See my post entitled ‘Silence is golden’ on January 14th, 2014.

Sources:

Robert P Crease, ‘Critical Point: Why don’t they listen?’ Physics World, May 2014

Max Weber, ‘Economy and Society’, 1922

Gretchen Reynolds, ‘Take a walk to stimulate creativity’, INYT, May 7th, 2014

Oppezzo, M., J. Schwartz, D., Give your ideas some legs: the positive effect of walking on creative thinking, Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, April 2014.

Felicity Mellor, Shhhh?  Scientists need to talk about not talking, The Guardian Newspaper blog January 15th, 2014 also The power of silence, Physics World, April 2014