Trust me, I’m an engineer

I’D like a quid for every time I have been told “You can do that. You are an engineer”.

It’s often part of a conversation about some trivial action that has a remotely “engineering” aspect to it ... or so my conversationalist friend believed...

The fact is that many people with engineering degrees are, like me, pretty damned ordinary when it comes to doing useful things. Sorry fellow engineers!

Of course there are some professional engineers who seem to be able to “do things with their hands” (actually being useful) as well as understanding the head-baffling bits.

However, I reckon there are plenty like me who are not much good at doing the simple things that call for practical know-how as well as smart theory...

I give you an example of what I mean from my personal work experience.

Going back more years than I care to remember, I was involved in the noble profession/trade of welding.

Welding is all about joining two or more things together. In my case that involved allegedly knowing all about the joining of two pieces of steel, aluminium or lots of other materials.

Without the ability to join together various lumps of metal it would be extremely difficult to build anything!

In 1962 I began a stint of lecturing and research at the University of Birmingham.

After about two months just settling in, my boss, a brilliant older man called Prof Seymour Redshaw, suggested that if I wanted to make a career in the universities I should get my finger out and begin the challenging journey towards getting a PhD.

Prof Redshaw was a former managing director of Boulton Paul Aircraft Company.

He called me ‘Dear Boy’ and was a superb boss.

He then asked me if I knew anything about welding.

I had just spent two years designing steel structures (with a little help from Dorman Long and Company). Therefore I decided it would be wise to say ‘Yes’.

He then suggested that MEXE, the Military Engineering Experimental Establishment, in Southern England had some research money available and wanted somebody to work towards a better understanding of a particular type of weld called a longitudinal fillet weld.

That’s a type of weld where the weld metal joins two load-bearing plates by a run of weld laid parallel to the direction of any applied loads.

Sounds complicated and it is when the engineer has to decide what the stresses are.

I took up the research challenge which involved a fair amount of philosophy and a hell of a lot of mathematics.

After some three-plus years involving a wedding (my own), a baby (our own) and a lot of late nights, I produced a PhD thesis entitled “Some Contributions to the Behaviour of Longitudinal Fillet Welds”.

This seemed to satisfy the examiners as well as MEXE and I became the local wizard in such matters.

Some clever people pretended to understand some of the mathematics.

They asked me complicated technical questions that I usually had no answer to even when I pretended to know what they were talking about.

I later became President of the Australian Welding Institute and this gave me much pleasure and the chance to meet many tradespeople who actually knew what they were talking about.

Now, here’s the truth. I knew, and still do know a great deal about the stresses and strains that arise when two pieces of metal are welded together and subjected to loads.

Luckily, people no longer ask me about such things, which is just as well because all the theory stuff fades or goes out-of-date.

Now, here’s the funny bit. I have never welded two pieces of metal together. Wouldn’t have a clue about how to do it properly. It’s quite scary!

‘‘ THE FACT IS THAT MANY PEOPLE WITH ENGINEERING DEGREES ARE, LIKE ME, PRETTY DAMNED ORDINARY WHEN IT COMES TO DOING USEFUL THINGS. SORRY FELLOW ENGINEERS!