Engineers, tell us what you do

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

First of all, stop here to get your National Engineers Week hug. Then come back and tell everyone what you do as an engineer. I know before I got into this field, I had no idea what engineering was about. Since then, I’ve found most people really haven’t a clue about what we do. So share a tidbit or two in the interest of reducing ignorance.

My degree is in Aero, but I’ve worked as a Mechanical engineer also. I started out doing tooling and equipment design, then designed aircraft modifications. These days, the most I design are one-of-a-kind repairs to an aging fleet of aircraft that needs to be kept flying till the replacement is chosen and built.

From my experience, I see engineering as the science of compromises. 'Tis said that from the list of Fast, Cheap, and Good, you can only pick 2 of the 3. You want it cheap and you want it now? Then don’t count on getting the best possible solution. You need it yesterday and it has to be perfect? It’s gonna cost ya. As a design engineer, you have to juggle the requirements of budget, schedule, and making your design work. It’s like solving a puzzle - it can be a lot of fun, or a lot of aggravation.

It can also be an invisible art, largely unappreciated. I have a personal illustration of that.

Some years back, I was working on a modification to a P-3A aircraft. The custodian of the plane wanted, among other things, 3 bunks in the back, and he wanted them shifted aft to allow for more galley space. And we had to use the usual P-3 bunk, so there would be no redesigning to tuck a custom bunk into the space.

I managed to get the stack oriented so that 3 of the 4 legs could attach at typical floor supports, but the 4th leg sat above an area with no structural support. Directly beneath the floor ran the control cables that went to the elevator and rudder. I needed to come up with a way to anchor the 4th leg without interfering with the cable runs. I spent hours considering this problem, trying to apply tried-and-true solutions to this odd area. It was frustrating.

Then inspiration struck. I figured out that I could take some angles and a “T” extrusion and make it work - it would be strong enough to hold the bunk leg while leaving the control cables free and clear. Even the artisan who installed the pieces commented on the design. But I expect few people would appreciate the elegance of the solution - it was just some aluminum riveted together.

I did that design 12 years ago, and to this day, I still get warm fuzzies thinking about how I found a simple answer to a perplexing problem. I suppose any 5 other engineers could have come up with 5 other equally effective solutions, but maybe not. I think I nailed it! :smiley: That’s engineering.

Anyone else?

2

That’s easy: An engineer is a person who sees something that isn’t broken and tries to fix it anyway.
Hey, do you know the difference between a civil engineer and a mechanical engineer? A mechanical engineer builds weapons, and a civil engineer builds targets.

Happy engineers week.

3

I have a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, and work for the World’s Second Best-selling Commercial Jet Airplane Company in Service Engineering. Operators send us telexes or call us asking why their airplane isn’t working, and we tell them how to fix it (put simplistically). I cover hydraulics on 737s and 757s, with a little bit of work on flight controls to fill in the chinks.

Prior to that, I worked here and there in the company, including stints on the 757 program, the B2 bomber, and the 737 Next Generation.

I’m an ordinary dull engineer type at the lowest level of the company and am unlikely to advance.

4

I’m not an engineer, but I’m a librarian in the machine tool industry, and I worked in civil engineering before that. What I’ve managed to learn about engineering is pretty damn breathtaking.

You folks deserve more accolades you’re getting, I know. :slight_smile:

5

I got my degree in environmental engineering in 1994 from the University of Illinois and have been working in that field ever since. In the environmental field, the majority of the jobs are in environmental consulting – the firms that are hired by other companies to handle their environmental issues. (For example, a manufacturing company may hire my firm to clean up their site following a release of hazardous chemicals, to assist them in getting an air permit for their manufacturing process, or to ensure that their facility is in compliance with the different state and federal environmental laws.) As a consultant, you gain a lot of technical experience, as you’re the guy who designs and implements the solutions. You’ll be writing permit applications, negotiating with environmental agencies, you’ll be on site supervising drilling and excavation and taking soil samples, et cetera. It can be a tough field. Margins are low and generally salaries are decent but benefits are terrible and there’s not a lot of perks. The pressure to remain billable is also tremendous - you don’t have lots of time to do things like organizing and planning.

Companies also may have in-house environmental staff to run their environmental programs and to supervise the consultants. I worked on the client side for several years as a national environmental program manager for a large retailer. The work was much easier than being a consultant and you exercise more of your non-technical skills (project and program management, budgeting, et cetera). It can be stifling, though, depending on your employer. I found that particular employer stifling, as they did not have the budget or the inclination to really solve their environmental problems – they’d just put a finger in the hole and hope the dike didn’t break. But if you’re working for a progressive company who’s really trying to improve their operations, it can be a lot of fun.

6

I got an environmental engineering degree in 1997, but I took a different road than Zanshin. After I finished college, I went to work for a start-up company that manufactured pollution control systems for non-point source applications. Basically, they designed, manufactured, and installed (or had someone install) underground installations that remove oils and sediments from stormwater runoff. Because it was a start-up company, I got a taste of everything the company did, from R&D and design to manufacturing, marketing, sales, and construction. It was a great place to work, and a fantastic way to learn about the development industry, but after a few years, I realized that it wasn’t really what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be.

During my last two years of college, I began taking a lot of hydrology classes, studying the way water moves in the environment (the natural or built environment). Those classes ended up being my favorite ones, and I wanted to work with more natural systems. So now I build rivers. I work for a non-profit group that does river, riparian, and wetlands restoration projects in Northwest Nevada. I work more and get paid a lot less than I did in the private sector, but I’m much happier.

7

I’m not doing anything but a bunch of stupid paperwork at the moment.

8

I have a degree in Chemical & Process Engineering with my Masters in Wastewater Management. So I can design stuff that will make stuff that will be useful (Anyone want to know how to design a Penicillin plant I am your girl - or run a refinery either way that would be me :D)

Right now I am working in the Oil & Gas Exploration world for a service company. I am a Cement Engineer - pumps & slurries are now my area of expertise :smiley:

9

I have a BSEE and a BS in Math, and I’m an electrical engineer, for a company that makes networking chips. More specifically, I’m a semiconductor product engineer. That means that I have to worry about taking this neat chip that the designers have come up with, and be able to actually make the dang thing. That means things like telling them what features they’re going to need to add to the design (even though our customers won’t need it) so that we can successfully test the chip. Coming up with good tests that don’t let any bad chips out (because it is trivially easy for the smallest particle to ruin a chip). Trying to figure out the right package to wrap around a chip, that will deal with the heat, and speed that the chip goes at. Making the whole process cheaper – improving yield (the percentage of chips that don’t fail by the end), reducing test, removing steps we don’t need to do. And, of course, determining the steps it has to take in our factory (and sometimes, at our subcontractors) to go from sand to a product our customers will buy.

10

I have a degree in Architectural Engineering but I work in the civil field doing bridge design. Which sounds really cool. But, I’m in Texas. Texas has the cheapest bridges per linear foot of any state anywhere. Why? 'Cause concrete is really cheap and we do almost no engineering. “When in doubt, make it stout” is TxDOT’s motto.

We design prestressed beams (which make up probably half of all the bridges designed in Texas) using an old program that runs in DOS and was originally written for punch cards. The manual of the program that defines the bridge geometry is a bad Xerox of typewritten pages and has paragraphs expaining what a computer is.

Actual Quote:

I wish I could show you guys the drawing of the robot computer.:slight_smile:

Anyway, cheap bridges, good for the state, kinda boring for the engineer.

11

Not quite an engineer yet, though hopefully come May I will be :slight_smile:

Assuming I pass all of my classes, I’ll graduate with a BS in biomedical engineering, with a concentration in mechanics. I have no job lined up, and at this point I still have no idea what it is engineers do. :confused:

Hopefully, I can get a job, or something.

12

For National Engineers Week, Kipling’s The Sons of Martha might be apt.

13

I was a student at a large midwestern university, and I never thought it would happen to me, but one day… I became an engineer at the same midwestern university. I am a mechanical engineer doing mechanical and civil work for the physical plant. What do I do?

In the design portion of my job, I create specifications that the contractor ignores because he’s “been installing sewer pipe for the last 20 years and darn well know how to install a manhole.” I create drawings that the contractor only vaguely follows because no matter how how much work you put into designing it, once you dig the trench, the original design never works exactly as planned.

In the construction inspection portion of my job I spend my days trying to get contractors to not bury things before I have seen them, and then when they fail to do so, spend the next day determining if I distrust that contractor enough to justify to various campus occupants why the excavation has to be reopened thus once again blocking access to their building for an additional week (or 3 depending on when the concrete contractor can come back.)

In the project management portion of my job I spend time juggling money between imaginary accounts to make the accountants happy. Even though it is all state money and all comes from the same place.

In the staff support portion of my job, I spend time creating standards that the pipefitters ignore as much as possible to do it the easier way, even if that way doesn’t meet safety requirements and will not last as long.

I was previously a consulting engineer. At that job I did the same type of design work. Only I did it with very rarely being able to go to the jobsite, so I never realized that office designs were usually greatly field modified. Oh, and at that job I learned all the CYA wording that fills about 70% of building specifications. I was amazed at how many sentences people liked to include to say things like “Do not use explosives to remove plumbing fixtures.”

Figured the upbeat thread needed a dose from the other side.

14

OK, this is going to sound really geeky, so . . . those of you with weak constitutions, you’ve been warned.
I work at the Science Museum.

I design and build control systems for interactive science exhibits. It involves programmable microcontrollers, A/V equipment, computers, motors, relays, lights, and a whole lot of buttons and wires. It’s quite similar to industrial controls, except that once in a while I have to deal with a Tesla Coil or Van De Graaf generator.

15

I have an SB and a PhD in Materials Engineering, but I never worked as an engineer. I went directly into a law firm, and now I am a patent lawyer. So I work with engineers a lot, and I have a pretty good idea of how they do a lot of stuff, but the only engineering I do is stuff like figuring out how to design lifts for my bookcases so they fit over the plumbing pipes.

I think my favorite patent that I have written is this one. It’s a classic “here’s a hammer, are there any nails I can find” kind of application. The client had a system for using plants to extract heavy metals from soil, but it turned out there was little money in toxic waste cleanup. So they took the same basic system and got the plants to absorb quantities of zinc, selenium, etc., and used them as nutritional supplements. Not exactly traditional engineering, but definitely in the spirit of the engineer.

The most “classical” engineering application I have written is for a method of building apartment buildings, but it hasn’t issued yet so I can’t describe the method. It’s pretty cool, though.

16

[QUOTE=Mariemarie]

I work at the Science Museum.
QUOTE]

You’re an engineer for a science museum. That is the coolest job in the world.

Kakofonous - a future physicist who really should’ve been an engineer.

17

Trigonal Planar - a future engineer who more and more is realizing he should’ve been a physicist! :smack:

18

Electrical Engineer by degree from Embry-Riddle, AZ in 1999.

Combat Engineer by trade from the USAF of the same year. I build things out of materials you’d never know you could use. I typically put up PEBs (like Morton Buildinds), UBMs, or KSpans. I also manage large scale projects on a peacetime basis (including stuctures, architecture, mechanical, and electrical stuff) for buildings.

Gotta take care of business. That’s part of the job.

Tripler
I do what I gotta do.

19

Wow,You guys (and girls!!)are so cool!envys:slight_smile: :smiley:

20

Someone had to say it:

Q. How do you know the human body was designed by a civil engineer?

A. Who else would put a toxic waste dump right next to a recreational area.

Seriously, though, I think engineers are cool. If I was any good at science type stuff, I’d like to be one. And my dad used to be an electrical engineer. :slight_smile: