Developing Engineers

In a post dated November 4th 2010, I declared a man a genius and no it wasn’t Mayowa Adebiyi but Professor Seamus Garvey. He denied the tag with a sharp, definitive – I am not a genius.

Despite our hero’s humility another by the name of ‘Tim’ agreed with the tag he will now find hard to shake, not because of my unashamed adulation of him but simply because anyone with an interest in Engineering, will and should be impressed with his ingenuity.

I did promise in my reply to his comment to ‘write my wrong’ of not doing enough justice to his Turbine design and was doing my research on his take on Compressed-Air Energy Storage (CAES) which he has had a few useless cycles on this system rid of and transformed into a complete forward flowing energy conversion process and called it ICARES (Integrated Compressed Air Renewable Energy Systems).

A presentation I saw by him, change my planned course, so now I have decided to let the man speak for himself.

Below is a bunch of screen grabs of a webinar given to the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). Click here for link.

With profound quotes like

“The climate change problem will not be solved by politicians, but by engineers”

“There is no law of physics or Engineering stating that power from offshore wind turbines must be more expensive than power from fossil fuels“

I cannot help but think we might be witnessing the making of a legend and I do honestly wish our reluctant hero the best of luck.

At a dinner table once, me and friend (A field technician for National Grid) was asked by a bunch of females the question - What exactly do engineers do ?

Now, understand that this question was not asked by blonde bimbos (Apologies to all Intelligent females, especially if you’re an Engineer) but people who were genuinely confused about what OUR purpose is. I replied “I’m just another paper pusher and He’s a glorified carpenter“. I can feel the virtual stones being hurled at me already but please gentlemen and a few women hear me out please.

We can reduce the achievement of great men like BRUNEL (as earlier mentioned by Thomas Hulbert) to simply placing a plank across a river, yet this will be stupid and sadly tarnish the memory of the great Engineer. Yet we must be reminded of the stupidity of past engineering pioneers who died (Percy Sinclair Piltcher -1899, ), failed several times (Henry Ford), laughed at and ridiculed for their perceived stupidity.

But i believe that was the spirit of the ENGINEERING PIONEERS, they were men who dared to solve problems, impossible problems no one else dared attempt to tackle and while still in this train of thought i came up with 1 statement to define the Engineer – Engineers are Problem Solvers !

Now to the question I now find irritating and i believe the old heads in the game love to talk about.

The title ‘Engineer’ just like any other respected professional title will always be misused; like Nannies to Nursery Nurse and Gardeners to Tree Surgeon, every Tom, Dick and Gary will call himself an ‘Engineer’ even if all he does is screw a light bulb.

The only solution will be to get a COALITION OF ENGINEERS together to form some sort of society where they can all recognise each other, thereby separating the wheat from the chaff … oops, I must have not done my research well because apparently some of these societies exist already one of such is

THE INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS

So like the free mason handshake (I’m not a Conspiracy Theorist), Engineers recognise each other from their names.

and let’s face it a Degree is not enough anymore, you can get those off the internet nowadays !!!

These are a series of pass-notes on inspirational Great British Engineers. At the beginning of each month a new profile will be published. Some are famous names – others forgotten in history; some studied engineering, some studied other subjects before finding engineering; and some had no formal education at all – but all left their impression in the field of mechanical engineering.