Engineers keep the world turning

As a professional engineer for over 50 years I was most interested in Tony Gutteridge’s very good question, ‘what is an engineer?’.

Brian Percival’s light-hearted response in OBM442 can’t be taken too seriously as it compares a skilled engineer with a layman – no contest! To suggest that someone can only be classified as an engineer if ‘chartered’ is not only incorrect, but also disparaging to many very talented individuals. Indeed, many of Britain’s finest and accomplished engineers have come from the humblest of backgrounds and became successful through intelligence, dedication and hard work.

As I see it, anyone who can either design, build and maintain engineering plant and assemblies, solving problems and arriving at solutions, either short or long term, has my vote to be classed as an engineer. I would agree there are many aspects within the engineering sphere nowadays that can be classed as a technician’s role – typically replacing a faulty part. Just because someone works in engineering doesn’t make them an engineer.

Engineering, particularly because of its practical nature, has long been looked down on compared with white collar professions. This is difficult for the engineer to comprehend because if all engineers downed tools the world would grind to a stop. Shortcomings in the educational system has exacerbated a problem that has got profoundly worse, in that there is too little practical training, such as proper apprenticeships, and too much university education – education with little or no job prospects.

Engineering is contained within literally every mortal thing we see and do. The world is kept revolving by engineers, so let’s not be too sniffy about definitions.