What would Brunel say?

 At the dawn of the second age, the desktop computer signaled the end of an era.

My coal-mining grandfather didn’t mean to but he inspired me to become an engineer. He regaled me with the stories of Doncaster, puffing on his pipe. We’d be standing in the middle of nowhere, Cusworth Country Park looking at the gentle rolling countryside. He’d be puffing on his pipe and he’d tell me we were standing on a roman road that ran straight to London. I’d think he was pulling my leg. Next he’d tell me Doncaster was a fishing port in them days. Oh come on! Grandad! Aye it’s true lad. With great affection I remember his patience in telling me the stories of the great lords of engineering and his own contributions to safety in the mines in the days before mechanization. My grandfather, from a family of twelve brothers (all down the mines), started work with the pit ponies at the age of eleven. He saw the general strike of 1929, he was refused military duty for the second world war and fought to keep Scargill from the mines and lost. When he retired he had spent 52 years down the mines and didn’t miss a day of it and wouldn’t wish a moment on anyone. He defined stoicism, pride and intelligence. Mechanization and the world economy changed the coal business in Britain forever. And my grandfather was indeed right about all the things he ever told me. Miners like him are extinct now.

The coal Britain produced for over a hundred years fuelled the mighty industrial revolution and the great lords of engineering ruled everything. One such great talent was Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He came from a family escaping the French revolution. His father Marc Brunel is credited with the first factory for making the threaded holes in wooden blocks for the rigging of the sailing ships, and boots for Wellington’s army. The end of the Napoleonic wars probably spelt doom for their ventures. Isambard went to university in Paris while his father avoided bankruptcy. Brunel had his first site experience on the first Thames tunnel and nearly lost his life; he designed the greatest sailing ships the world had ever seen, the fastest train time to Bristol and the first suspension bridge. An extraordinary talent who died at the young age of 54 from overwork. He was brash, aggressive but also a man who lived in the future.

Where was I? The desktop computer, the second age. But hang on whatever happened to the first age? The first age was ruled by mighty mainframes getting bigger aye lad. Puff puff, It were brilliant, structural engineers and mathematicians were the rulers of it. Puff puff. It were not pretty but it put man on the moon, built nuclear submarines and designed earthquake-safe bridges. Good enough for me. Then some booger comes along and puts a desktop computer out. Puff puff. What he’d do that for? Can you hear my grandad ? That’s me now!

Quite simple, profit. Mass market, mass opportunity. Sort yourselves out chaps, well done thank you. Go go. I am not sure if Brunel had an accent but nothing stopped him, parliament, limits, or any other engineer. Maybe Bill Gates could measure up to Brunel but I am not so sure. At least Bill is a gentleman although he was aggressive in pursuit of his goal and he saw the future too. But Bill left a mortal wound in the structural engineering profession and it could continue to bleed us dry.

However, in pursuit of their own agenda, the structural analysis programmers, the lords of the second age undertook a pyramidal effort to build the best structural analysis programs. While the engineers struggled to come to terms with Windows for Workgroup 3.11 Lotus 123 and Symphony were slashing it out for the top spot only to become Excel. The rapid proliferation of computer languages, opportunities, diversities, continual upgrades and revisions left the engineers dispirited and exhausted trying to keep up. The structural analysis programmers saw an opportunity to capitalize and with a wink said, “we’ll take care of that.” And we accepted it. We turned out backs on the world and became specialists. Now when we analyze, we hit the button and file it.

The diversity the desktop technology brought, in terms of better pay in newly spawned industries and the old boys hanging their hats to retire, left us bleeding and lacking continuity. At one time calculations were the engineers pride and joy, with the power of the pencil he could draw the problems out to match anything Brunel designed. Now we are walking backwards into a tar pit of mediocrity and killing our potential productivity too.

Compare the ages. One age was the t-square on upright boards, rotring pens, pin ups, smoking, constant banter, slide rules, well-thumbed tables and a huge draughty hall. To be an engineer then was to be respected and leading the team. The current age is a silent sea of computers, cubicles, privacy, no tables, and a sterile office. The engineer is becoming a figurehead. The defaults of the new technology overwhelmed us and we sacrificed quality to third party. The modern programmers don’t realize the terrible mess they have left in their wake to innovate technology again and again. I am not nostalgic, I am worried, am I alone in what I see?

The major difference for me, is the calculations. I learned my trade and craft from the power of good calculations. It would simplify, educate and be a work of art to appreciate. I see a calculation today and it will likely be disappointing, difficult to read and very detailed. Is this the path into the future? Engineers have the power to change their roles and prove their ability but they have to be inspired. We live in the age of defaults and we have to break those too.

I lived in two eras and I believe we are facing extinction in the third. Puff puff. Now like my grandad, I am leaning on the fence staring into eternity wondering what Brunel would say?

The 7 most deadly sins of MS Word in Engineering Calculations

“Sin #1: No structure is presented. All calculations are planned. Without a plan to read that tells you what you are going to read you need to keep an open mind and see what happens and then evaluate what you have read. It means you have to hold all calls, close the door and set aside time to read it and you don’t want to do that. A structured plan helps you to understand what you are going to read; this plan tells you what is included, what is to be done and what is not included. When you start to prepare your calculations you have an agreed list of headlines you need to address throughout the design cycle. A plan is more than the contents list, it is also a visual roadmap that helps navigation. This plan should be agreed by the team.

Sin #2 Pasting pictures/tables from Excel directly.  You have spent time formatting your tables in Excel and now you want to include it in your calculation. You find when you paste directly you will either spend hours trying to replicate the table properties in your document, or choose to print it separately. Anything you bring into Word, you must use the Edit> Pastes Special> Picture (JPEG) format. This means MS Word will not tamper or adjust hidden settings it would normally recognize. In the imported item. Selecting Picture means it puts its hands up and lets you insert your picture/table unmolested! If you need to change the table, you go back to the source document and re-insert the new table. No time is wasted. Now we’re using MS Word as a desktop publisher.

Sin #3: Not enough information on a page.  Including graphics from external sources should be resized so as to fit as much information on a page. The human eye reads drawings faster than the words on the page. Showing plans, sections and elevations from a StaadPro output, typically spawned across twenty pages is difficult to coordinate in the mind. Reducing all the drawings to a single page means a single page can be viewed and the mind can construct the visual information instantly. This single page becomes the valuable blueprint for the designers, third-party, multi-disciplines and the client.

Sin #4: Too much writing in calculations: A calculation is different to a report, it should not betray one’s culture or proficiency in language. A calculation is a series of logical numbers and diagrams arranged in a methodical and practical manner. In calculations, you build your pages around the plan, even if there is only three lines on one page, or another page is jammed full of sketches and diagrams. In calculations, you do not need to worry about headers and header numbering. Where the report is the written justification, the calculation is the visual collection of the relevant numbers and diagrams. The report must show the correct use of language, the calculations must show the correct use of theory, units and numbers. Do not mix these. If you cannot spell, get someone to check all spelling.

Sin #5:  Writing your headlines and/or body copy in ALL CAPS.  Research has shown that people find reading text that is typeset in all caps extremely difficult to read as well as very annoying, especially body copy written in all caps.  If you want appreciative readers for your calculations, do not use all caps for any text, especially body copy. Using default line thickness for tables and lines are similarly “loud” and annoying.

Sin #6:  Not using page/section breaks properly.  There are two types of end-of-line return. These are soft ( as you type more than a page width) and hard line return(where you hit the enter key.) As each page is built to a plan, you do not want to use a continual series of end returns to find your way to the next page. Use the page section break(control + enter keys). This prevents future changes impacting and pushing empty lines onto the next page when you add new lines of text or a graphical image.

Sin #7: Not using visuals. Relegating quality of results to third party applications is bad enough but presenting endless reams of results without any visuals to the reader is poor form. The checker will not appreciate the lack of effort. Rather than write, as in a report, use diagrams and visual aids to follow the logic of the calculations. Learning to draw in Word is very easy and fast. Importing visuals from outside Word is also a simple and powerful tool. The imported visuals can be embellished further by annotations and highlighting key features. 

Sins #8 – 27.  Yes, there are far more than 7 deadly sins of MS Word in engineering calculations, and sadly, your team is probably making most of them, thus killing the readership and undermining the productivity by proving that Word does not work for them .

These suggestions are a snapshot from The Engineer’s Word, the first book in a series of The Mote Method. Available from www.trafford.com or www.amazon.com. The Mote Method is intended for the corporate engineering environment to support excellent calculations rather than the commercial development of engineering spreadsheets and programs.

 The Mote Method is about:

• Creating effective calculations;
• Rules of good layout;
• Looking after the formats;
• How to show assumptions graphically;
• Designing and creating visual tools, such as flowcharts, key diagrams and hyperlinks; and
• How to design spreadsheets for the future.

This level of respect for the calculations will show tremendous educational benefits for future graduates, clients and practicing engineers.

As one of the world’s unique training firm for engineers in the design office, Motagg Solutions focuses on demonstrating how only 10% of MS Word generate stunning results in improved productivity for your team. The Mote Method is a tried and tested principles developed by Dr Robert Mote, working in the frontline of the real world — and it shows. The Mote Method goes beyond MS Word and looks at MS Excel and VBA. The Mote Method has helped generate powerful results for many of the world’s most prestigious companies, including:

• ABB Lummus Global, NL –Shell Seraya Project
• AMEC, UK – FPSO Bonga Project
• Fluor, UK – Kuwait KOC GC25  Plant, Kazakhstan SGI/SGP Tengizchevroil
• Fluor Canada – CNRL  Horizon Project, New Delhi team.
• Jacob Canada – Suncor Firebag Project, Mumbai, Charleston teams

Kirkus Review for The Engineer’s Tables

The Mark of Zorro

When I used to face insurmountable odds in my PhD, my dearest friend and I, sitting at the bar, stuck with writers’ block and all the joys of the morgue, would joke with the flick of the wrist, the mark of Zorro and in an accent say, just do it. This was always accompanied by a little guffaw. Don’t ask me why or how it came to be but it was our private joke and a way of coping with the extreme workload, lack of interest, lack of enthusiasm and lack of finances! So many barriers to simple success we thought. The truth, we knew was us, we were the problem.

I recently had an interesting conversation with a manager (VP) of a large engineering firm who was curious how I could claim to succeed where no one has succeeded before. He was very experienced and we were able to discuss in step-by-step details how engineers could improve productivity. He was still skeptical at the end, after all, he doesn’t know me and he has never heard of what I propose or seen it done this way but he was intrigued.

At the heart of it, engineering design firms are ‘conservative’ and the talented manager sitting at the top, looking for a small commercial advantage, believe if they cannot do it themselves, how can they expect other engineers to do it? The thinking is to rely on technological advances in 3D models, drawing production tools and ignore the delays by engineering work processes.Managers believe they are still engineers and do not believe it can be done.

Following recent comments on my published articles, engineers across all disciplines have kindly replied and expressed agreement with my suggestions. They do understand it can be done. and it is so simple. The major obstacles to productivity have been more personal than we realise. Recently, the IBM president spoke to his company and said that the days of innovative technologies are over, it is time for innovative processes. He is so right! The engineers have still not caught to the opportunities of everyday computer programs of the last fifteen years. You can double your productivity easily just by understanding a simple innovative process designed for engineers.

Professional people do not use MS Office tools well. MS Office programmers know it too which is what they hoped to turn around with Office 2007. They unwittingly created the problem in the first place but they have never fixed the blindspot in their thinking. I will discuss this more next week.

Every manager I have worked with is poor in Word, Excel and VBA skills. Read it again. Every one of them, I mean really poor and strictly it is disgraceful. And they are the ones who discourage the opportunity to use these tools in the engineer’s work but they will spend millions on the next technology advantage so that some unqualified designers can design a refinery in two weeks, without an engineer in sight. I always heard the mantra, “site will sort it”. When this happens this pushes problems to the site team which does not have an engineering bean in its body and now have to resolve constructability issues in the details. They blame the engineers for the stupidities and costs and schedule overruns.

Computer illiteracy within the engineering profession is rampant and is now the number one enemy of productivity. People are laughing at their own silent Mark of Zorro and managers are blocking the path to better processes because they couldn’t do it or they don’t see it. A positively Dilbertian view.

I have worked on the same project, 4 years now,  from cradle to completion.  I work on site and I see it can be done, so much better.  The next company that embraces what I propose will enjoy enormous advantages, save money and become market leaders in engineering.

It can be done,  just do it. Swish swish Swish, The Mark of Zorro

A Structural Engineer’s Pop Quiz!

 Engineers’ career go through a lifecycle of changes in roles but I believe we have a responsibility to future generations of engineers and we start this through our calculations. We must assume responsibility for the quality, not only of the analysis but also of the calculations.

 This is like some glossy magazine pop quiz! Without the gloss.

 Ask yourself these questions;

1)      Do you like doing calculations?

1. Hate it
2. Avoid it at all cost
3. Got to do it
4. Love it

2)      Are you proud of your calculations?

1. Didn’t understand the question
2. The bigger the better, I aim for size!
3. Would like to be but got to admit, there’s something wrong.
4. Definitely. It is planned, easy to read and pleasant.

3)      Have you ever picked up a calculation that made you sit up and enjoy?

1. What planet are you on? You don’t enjoy calculations!
2. Never, only my own.
3. I read one a long time ago that was good
4. Keep hoping.

4)      When did you last train on MS Word?

1. waste of time, I am not a secretary.
2. Never, I hate it.
3. bought the reference, haven’t had time
4. My boss is all over me to do all the training

5)      When did you last train on MS Excel?

1. waste of time, I use MathCAD
2. Never, I know how to use it well
3. Forget it, I am into Access
4. Everybody loves my spreadsheets

6)      When was the last time you had any formal PC training?

1. Don’t need it
2. Only lunch and learn sessions
3.  Don’t know what I need to know!
4. Looked up courses at college, went for Professional Development

How did you do?

Score as follows: a) zero, b) one, c) two, d) three

Reveal yourself ! Imagine this, 80% of engineers spend 80% of their time doing calculations and they cannot tell you how they feel about their calculations.  Strange situation. 

0-6 points: Sometimes you wonder why you are an engineer. People annoy you and you hate checking calculations. You are set in your ways and will resist change at all costs. You spend time thinking about what else you could be doing. Fortunately, you don’t really exist!

6-12 points: You often work alone and don’t talk about your calculations. You like to spend more time with the analysis and find preparing the calculations are a tedious last minute task. You neglect to talk to other disciplines and spend little time with the designers. The idea of working to deadlines is not terribly exciting.

12-18 points: You are an enthusiastic engineer open for change. You find yourself stuck in a rut wondering how to become a better engineer. You want to meet the deadlines but there is so much work to do and so little time. Under the pressure of a deadline, you also spend a lot of time checking calculations and wonder if it they are adequate. You know calculations are vital tools of the trade. You look in bookshop for inspirations.

19-24 points: You are well on the way to being a better engineer for trying to find the ways to improve your calculations. You know good calculations means good engineering. Confusion and miscommunications are avoided because you think about the reader, the users and talk all the time to all people who have an interest in your work. You are a clever engineer who learned to be smart.

 To break the strait-jacket thinking, engineers need to look at the way they work:

• Brainstorm the details together
• Talk to each other
• Work together, not in isolation
• Break the work into smaller components
• Perform more frequent regular checks.
• Be visual in your work
• Identify, agree and focus on the key component of the design
• Avoid automatically performing 3D analysis
• Use analysis to verify the thinking.
• Leave the analysis towards the end of the design cycle
• Think about the reader
• Do not keep a history of superseded pages in the calculations
• Ensure the calculations are an active component of the design office cycle
• The calculations are a minimum basis for design, not the final.
• Go electronic
• Talk about your job, all the time!

Quirks of Excel

My first article reaches a bigger audience this week. It is titled A Structured Mess, you can find it at http://tiny.cc/2kmyS

I posted it to a group of process engineers to see if it resonated with them and I have to say I really like this group of inquisitive and bright engineers. They actively use the internet to find and share information. I will be spending more time with them! Very illuminating comments.

Did you know? As Michael Caine would say:

Your comments are absolutely correct. I also have seen the “dumbing down” of our calculations, but I think one of the most interesting is how you can use EXCEL to demonstrate that 1/0 = 1319.07

In cell B2, enter the value 1
In cell B3, enter the equation =1/B2
Then, using goal seek, set the value of cell B3 to zero by adjusting the value in cell B2. Always converges to 1319.07

Keith mentions the effect of changing the starting point of a calculation to change convergence. In EXCEL, if you begin with “2″ in cell B2 instead of “1″, it changes the convergence … it changes to 1/0 = 1007.68

Very repeatable

What is frightening is the fact that millions of calculations have been done using goal seek in EXCEL, and people do not understand how it actually works.

This came from John Westover and I didn’t know this. I had, for the longest time, limited myself to only 10% of Excel and avoided learning such possibilities but goodness me, what they don’t tell you!

Light at the end of the tunnel

Ay long last my excel database project has been rolled out and demonstrated. It works very well and now starting on the top level reports.

As a result of all of that effort, I am staying on Firebag for the foreseeable future.

Seminars have been posted for end July. In-house corporate work is going to be the focus for the next few months. Articles will start being released in August and continue monthly until December.

Now as the dust settles, I will finish the third book.

At the end of the day

I was told the other day that I kept breaking rules. Well, rules are fine, I make plenty, so I know they are also for breaking.

 

Some engineers are strong enough to make rules for all of us to follow but it does get blurry when we lose common sense.

 

For example; I have worked with wind loads to many international codes. I was taught by an engineer to use 1 kN/m2 and I will be fine. So if I have a piperack with a total projected area of 6 m x 30 m and 20% solidity I am looking at about  220 kN. A nice one-liner to get the design rolling along for the braces, connections and foundation designs.

 

The checker is horrified that I have not used the required 7-page MathCAD calculation  for calculating the wind load, in which he calculates 232 kN. I am happy to modify number but say we do not need to replicate the MathCAD for every piperack as they are similar.  Goodness, I was called a rulebreaker as though that was a slur. It was not acceptable that a design could be started without a structural analysis program.

 

I showed 15 years of examples of piperack design that summarised the primary loads for all my designs and his figures nor mine were unreasonable. Can we move on? Have you heard of  “At the end of the day?” Ours is not an exact science.  We are supposed to determine reasonable numbers and be in agreement.

To me there was reasonable agreement between 232 kN and 220 kN.

 

I remember I used to hear that all the time, when checking calculations: ‘At the end of the day, you’re right but it makes no difference to the final design’. Now here I was quoting the wisdom of my hallowed peers.

 

As much as I believe there are major differences in technocultural issues in different drawing offices there are also generational  issues related to experiences. In one office I asked many engineers to tell me what the total wind load on the piperack was and was told, they didn’t know; it was taken care of by the program as they applied a uniformly distributed load on a detailed 3D model of beams, columns, braces etc. Now that is crazy. Was it 230 kN or 540 kN?

 

At the end of the day I used my numbers and checked whether the design was adequate. Shrugged my shoulders and accepted the microscopic examination was, for the most part,  conservative. The question of whether it took a day or three months was never asked.

Revolution versus Evolution

I know I can show you an easier way to do calculations and enjoy it.  But I know that no one like changes, most of all engineers! We get stuck in our ways and it works for us. Change takes effort and careful reconsideration. So why change? Particularly if no one else is willing to change.

Firstly, you have to want to change.  I can think of a whole host of reasons to change and I will lay them out. But first we have to agree we have a problem. It takes many forms: maybe you don’t like doing our calculations anymore. Maybe you are not happy checking 500 pages. Or maybe you are concerned with the time it is taking your team to complete the task.

The attention span of an engineer to new ideas is superfast, loaded with cynicism, skepticism and instant dismissal. It can take a word to lose them. Just say “spreadsheet” and bang they’re off. And I wrestle with the difference between revolution and evolution. Some see my ideas as a revolution and I think OK but to me it is more of an evolution.

I have lived with it and developed it over a long period of time;  it has been a process of continuous adaptations and constant feedback to the engineer in the design office doing the calculations. It is now a tested and proven idea ready to be shared with engineers who are willing to evolve to a new way of doing calculations. However, the results of applying the ideas go far beyond the personal and immediate goals, it is so much more as a team.

Revolution implies resistance and a fight to change, possibly big changes. Fortunately, many engineers will be familiar with many of the suggestions, which are hardly revolutionary; it is their practical, collective  and connective relationship that makes it works; so it is hardly revolutionary at that level. 

Evolving to new ideas that will set standards in the future will be easier than changing your ways. To learn if you want to adapt , turn to your colleague and start to talk about the calculations, how you prepare it. Voice it and listen to yourself.

The evolution is a series of small steps and personal goals to adapt to the new ways. The revolution is the collective application by the team. Don’t judge the revolution, if evolution works for you. The revolution will speak for itself.

Quality Circles

When I was an undergraduate at Sheffield University I was told I had to take a two hours’ mandatory course in Industrial Pollution. That didn’t stop many of us from not turning up. It was just after lunchtime, when many of us had been in the pub, the sunshine was streaming in through tall dirty windows and we were ready to doze for two hours. we could only be twenty graduates there out of seventy. The lecturer turned up and was introduced to us and we were left alone. From that day to this, is the only two hours’ I remember with clarity. It was the most amazing experience of my life, that it was possible that someone could stand there and make us sit up and listen to him about Industrial Pollution. His name was Prof Andrew Porteus from The Open University. He boomed, he terrified us, he made us laugh and none of us who was on that course would forget him. I can still hear his voice echoing down the corridor of time, more than 28 years ago. He was a juggernaut. That is the experience I want to bring out in my seminars. He was an inspiration for me. I have always paid attention to industrial pollution and he very much triggered my conscience and first ethics issue in my first career in engineering.  

While I had only non-existent respect for the subject of industrial pollution, in the space of two hours I would be transformed. What he did was teach me more than the subject. He believed and he traveled to make people listen and he was very very good at it. He was very non-academic in his approach.

Similarly, the seminars I present are a unique opportunity for the audience as it is from a professional engineer working in the trenches and realizing his experiences may be of value to anyone willing to listen. I want to give you the best of what I have and motivate you to find the spirit in you to do your best in the future. What I teach is ageless and timeless. Regardless of many years’ experience, or just starting. The future belongs to you. The opportunity some of you will get in your lifetime is going to be amazing and I look forward to the stories already BUT it starts today.

 I am an engineering leader in calculations, compressor foundation designs, blast and designing work processes for the engineering team. I believe myself to be unique in what I do. I believe engineering leadership can be taught through any subject.  

What I bring to the seminars, are my experiences, my judgment and a demonstration of my passion for what I do. What can you do with that? My mission here and now, is to get you to listen to me.  Totally.  Why do I do it? Not because it is a job, because it is my mission. Mission? Well you see I believe we are a profession in crisis and we need to talk to each other. If I can motivate some of you through my examples, books or seminars to carry the flame, then I am happy.

 Engineering is not just cracking the problem and finding solutions, it is teamwork, busting out of the cubicle, talking, sharing, asking questions and still not getting answers. It is confidence, consideration and clarity. Engineering leadership is innovation through teamwork. If you shine, the team shines. I am trying to share everything I know and maybe you can run with it.

 I am an engineer that has lived in three ages.  An age without computers. I was taught by engineers with over thirty years’ experience with slide rules, log tables and common sense. I lived through the second age where the desktop computers killed the art of engineering. We are now in the third age, extinction or survival. We need the books, the experiences, and seminars to be run by engineers who live in the frontline of the real world and there are not many of us. Listen to my language and the unspoken words not just what I say. It is why I do what I do.

 When I began doing compressor foundation designs, it was with Fortran programming. I spent years with the equations and programming them for solutions, but there is more to compressor foundation designs than the theory. There is the power of presentation. In a subject perceived to be complicated, the power of presentation is everything. I spent a lot of time emphasizing this. A default calculation will get you an eventual nod, a powerfully presented calculation will get a thank you! And your name will be remembered. Engineering is teamwork but Engineering is also about legacy. What you create is your reputation. Everything in my experience confirmed that, not that I knew it with foresight but only because I committed myself to quality, a long time ago. Accidental you might say, but I recognize it is Quality circles in action.

Whatever happens in the seminars won’t be the powerpoint slides or the notes you’ll never read that you remember. It will be that an engineer, Robert Mote came to town and gave me some really useful ideas and made me pay attention.  When I do a seminar, that is my driving thought and the result I look for.