
Structural engineers are unsung heroes - fern12
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/feb/11/roma-agrawal-structural-engineers-are-unsung-heroes-interview-shard
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mauvehaus
I don't understand people who _aren 't_ fascinated by engineering generally
and infrastructure specifically. I love knowing how stuff works, even if I
don't understand it at the technical level an engineer does.

So much of what we use we take for granted, but it really is worth seeing what
goes into making potable water come out of your tap. In middle school, I
toured the Baldwin water plant in Cleveland, OH. There is a huge hall full of
sand filters that filter out the schmutz after the water is chemically
treated. It's one thing to know abstractly that drinking water is filtered
through sand to make it drinkable. It's another to see the process in action
on a grand scale.

In Boston, I highly recommend seeing the Chestnut Hill pumping station, which
pumped water from the Chestnut Hill reservoir. It long predates the
availability of sufficiently powerful electric motors, and the three steam
engines are a testament to how much work went into pumping water around prior
to the development of electric pumps.

I believe the last of the steam engines was decommissioned in the early '70s.
I'm told the pumping capacity has been replaced by electric pumps in a single
3m square building, which somehow doesn't convey the same sense of awe and
indebtedness to the engineers who make running water possible.

Gotta share a longtime favorite joke:

What's the difference between civil (structural) engineers and mechanical
engineers?

Mechanical engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.

------
Maro
One of the best general Engineering books I've read is 'Design Paradigms'.
It's an excellent book about the importance of understanding failures in
Engineering. The author is Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of
history at Duke University, so all the examples are roads/bridges/etc.

As a Data/SWE guy, I still enjoyed reading it a lot.

[https://www.amazon.com/Design-Paradigms-Histories-
Judgment-E...](https://www.amazon.com/Design-Paradigms-Histories-Judgment-
Engineering/dp/0521466490)

~~~
wpietri
Ooh, that reminds me of another excellent book on failure, Sidney Dekker's
"Field Guide to Understanding Human Error":
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1472439058](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1472439058)

It's about investigating airplane crashes, and in particular two different
paradigms for understanding failure. It deeply changed how I think and talk
about software bugs, and especially how I do retrospectives. I strongly
recommend it.

And the article made me think of Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn":
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140139966](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140139966)

It changed my view of a building from a static thing to a dynamic system,
changing over time.

The BBC later turned it into a 6-part series, which I haven't seen, but which
the author put up on YouTube, starting here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0)

I especially like that in the comments he writes: "Anybody is welcome to use
anything from this series in any way they like. Please don’t bug me with
requests for permission. Hack away. Do credit the BBC, who put considerable
time and talent into the project."

~~~
mcguire
That first episode should be required viewing (repeatedly!) by all architects,
physical or software. Geeze.

------
sidcool
This is true. While dealing with building architects on many occasions during
my internship, they would say silly things like, 'Can you not just avoid this
girder/beam/pillar?'

My boss would coldly say 'Do you mind removing brake pedals from your car to
make it prettier'?

~~~
jdavis703
I hope as you progress through your career you learn to be more respectful of
diverse ideas. I'm a software engineer, I have to have discussions with
designers and business people who also sometimes ask for things that just
aren't reasonably doable given time and budget constraints. It's our job as
professionals to explain this using a tone and words that educates others on
what the technical constraints are.

~~~
alsetmusic
> I hope as you progress through your career you learn to be more respectful
> of diverse ideas. I'm a software engineer, I have to have discussions with
> designers and business people who also sometimes ask for things that just
> aren't reasonably doable given time and budget constraints. It's our job as
> professionals to explain this using a tone and words that educates others on
> what the technical constraints are.

Funny. I inferred the tone as having levity. One, or both, of us is
projecting.

~~~
thaumasiotes
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/02/different-
worlds/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/02/different-worlds/)

------
montrose
"Although it might seem a sane and reasonable business, the world’s great
engineers, she believes, were "very eccentric characters, all very tenacious,
the sort who were cheeky at school and didn’t do what their parents wanted
them to do"."

~~~
reallymental
That's all very nicely put, to fit a lot of people into that mould don't you
think? Very 'horoscopic'.

Everyone is disagreeable & eccentric to some extent when they were young,
including the world's great engineers/theorists.

There's more to this equation, add parameter of hard work, a bit of obsession
(or 'passion', whatever that is...), a bit of environmental 'push', and THEN
perhaps that might yield a 'great' individual who does that one thing very
well.

~~~
WJW
In other news, 100% of known engineers is human.

A much more interesting piece of information would be how many people have
those characteristics, but do _not_ turn out to be great engineers.

------
dzink
Structural engineers have one of the most stressful jobs as well. Work is
incredibly precise with deadly consequences under tight deadlines with a lot
of egos in the way. Massive respect to those who thrive in this profession.

~~~
keketi
> Structural engineers > stressful

Pun intended?

------
myegorov
Coming from the profession, I often think that the problem is quite the
opposite -- that there're too many engineers with an outsized ego. In almost
every way, aside from schooling, the structural engineer's trade is no
different than any other construction trade, and has a contribution -- framed
in financial terms, or in terms of common good -- on the scale of that of a
(qualified) tradesman.

~~~
antod
_> the structural engineer's trade is no different than any other construction
trade, and has a contribution -- framed in financial terms, or in terms of
common good -- on the scale of that of a (qualified) tradesman. _

Not sure how to read that or how you meant it, but a good or bad engineer can
have a big financial effect on a project in a way that a tradesman couldn't.

~~~
myegorov
A construction project is overdetermined to a degree that few other
enterprises are. In terms of compensation, an hour of a practicing structural
engineer (aside from Calatrava & co.) is worth about as much as a carpenter's
(who's paid his dues, so at about the same level of investment as engineer's
into his profession). In terms of know-how or sweat equity or risk
minimization, it's near impossible to say who, if anyone, contributes
disproportinately more than others.

~~~
antod
Are you talking about the on site engineers supervising the project build
(kinda menial work), or the up front design engineers working with the
architects?

For the former yeah I can kinda see where your coming from, but for the latter
there is huge scope to affect how the project turns out financially in a way
that a carpenter or supervising engineer just doesn't have.

~~~
myegorov
A structural engineer in the US, at a minimum, requires a Professional
Engineer license. The licensing requirements are similar elsewhere in North
America, and in Britain. In some states (such as California), to practice
structural engineering requires a Structural Engineer license. So anytime I
mentioned structural engineering in this thread, it goes without saying...

------
cee_el
I see no mention of Florida anywhere

~~~
chrisseaton
The article is from February.

------
cityofghosts
i dont understand why people who write code consider themselves engineers.
they arent liable if their code breaks. they have no professional licensing
system. they dont even need an education.

~~~
dschuler
There's a lot of debate about what kind of activity software development is.
The camp that doesn't see it as engineering argues that programming is a
craft, or that code is "grown".

I think one of the key differentiators for engineering is that something
engineered should work by design after it has been built (not including
regular maintenance of a machine). A defect requires a special process to
repair all built instances.

In software development, defects are a regular occurrence requiring continuing
changes, and requirements change as well. Of course, that's very different
from a bridge or a combustion engine for example.

Automated testing can help push software development _toward_ an engineering
mindset.

BTW - you're right that most software devs don't need licensing or formal
education, but it comes off as pejorative. While those could help set
standards, some of the most talented people I've worked with have neither (and
some of my class mates in college don't affirm a benefit for formal training).

~~~
galaxyLogic
In software development you are solving new problems continually. If you
weren't you could just call a library function with some parameters and be
done with it.

Structural engineering is much like calling library functions with certain
parameters and then making sure it all works and is safe. You know how what
you are constructing differs from existing buildings and use that to decide
what to do. You don't (usually) invent new ways of building things or building
things that are unlike anything that was built before.Therefore such projects
are well-known engineering practice, and your skill and knowledge of those
practices can be tested and you can be licensed.

Some software development is like that too but most is not, you are creating
new designs all the time because your software is for new purposes, not to
replace something existing with perhaps a slightly improved version. It's hard
to license anybody in "inventing new things".

~~~
antod
Would it be too presumptuous to assume you have less structural engineering
experience than you do with software?

You seem to be forgetting that vast majority of software development is
churning out the same old buggy barely maintainable CRUD apps in dull
enterprise environments or for tight fisted agency clients.

~~~
bobthechef
Precisely. I would have been less charitable in my response. Most software
development is plumbing. To say we're solving new problems all the time and
then to set that in some unclear opposition to what structural engineers do...
I mean, just like software, each SE's project is different and yet similar
across cases. That's uninformative, to say that least. So if you want to
contrast them, it's best to actually know what you're talking. Also, I always
hated occupational narcissism. It's a sign of narrow-mindedness.

(Besides, the question about whether software development is engineering or
craft is very much real. John Allen, John McCarthy, Bertrand Meyer and Peter
Denning have all written interesting things about this subject.)

