Engineering Learning & Practice Research Home Page
Comparing engineering practice in South Asia and Australia
The motivation for this work is to gain a better understanding of engineering practices in South Asia (e.g. India, Pakistan, etc.,), and its implications for engineering education. Most of the available literature on comparative studies in engineering practices details only on advanced industrialized nations like Japan, America and Europe. The role of engineer in developing countries is not well understood and utilized. Economic development and even important societal needs such as clean water supply and sanitation rely on engineering. Observations, document analysis, and interviews are used to study the development of technical knowledge, technical skills, communication and variety of other engineering roles in comparison perspective. Our aim is to document the work of engineer systematically and then to find the similarities and differences in the way engineering work is accomplished. Finally discuss the implications for engineering education.
Unintentional Knowledge in Laboratory Classes
In the engineering profession, the main task is to manipulate material and energy for the benefit of humankind. This task will successfully be achieved if the engineers, technicians and others have knowledge and experience related to the specific engineering field. Experience in an engineering laboratory is an important element for engineering students. By attending laboratory classes and handling (working with) the equipment, the students are likely to realize its task and function. These laboratory experiences are likely to enhance related concepts, which they have learned theoretically.
Although the aim of the laboratory is giving opportunities for students to learn and enhance engineering concepts, we do not know what actually happens in the laboratory. Furthermore, for hands-on laboratories, usually students are divided into groups of four or five people, to run a single exercise. Sometimes, not every single student has contact with or handles the equipment. In contrast, remote access laboratories normally give opportunities to individual students to run the laboratory remotely. In this scenario, it is assumed that students learn what there are supposed to.
Previous research shows that the development of experience will happen when the students are ‘doing’ the laboratory. Through their experience, they may possibly be able to detect and solve problems or easily diagnose faults of the equipment. Their experience develops either intentionally or unintentionally. Gaining knowledge unintentionally [through experience rather than direct instruction], is believed to play an important role in laboratory work. However, the question is, do the students who gain experience during their laboratory classes possess a high level of unintentional knowledge which allow them to diagnose the faults of equipment easily.
In this research, a survey on the ability to recognize basic mechanical parts and activities will be run by an on-line survey. The survey contains images and videos of mechanical parts and some basic related activities. The results are likely will show the differences of students who have good unintentional knowledge in basic mechanical parts and who have lack of that knowledge. Instead of we use the expert-novice differences; we can explore a good-lack of unintentional knowledge differences. Then the research followed by questionnaires which is involved work-related situations and responses. For every situation stated, the students will give the suitable responses in the Likert scale. The students will also attend the semi-structure interview, which is focused on their experience in laboratory classes. Finally, the students will be given an activity to diagnose simple equipment faults. Their activity will be observed individually by visual observation (video recording).
In summary, the aim of this research is to find the correlation between unintentional knowledge and experience in laboratory classes with the ability to diagnose equipment faults. To our knowledge, there has been no similar research done in this area and the outcomes of this research will be beneficial to engineering education.
Leonie Gouws is studying maintenance managers and their work patterns. She has observed that maintenance managers tend to work under great pressure and that the CMMSs that support their work have many shortcomings. Often these systems are poorly configured and do not serve the needs of those who use them. Leonie is a well recognised and highly experienced SAP expert with 20 years of experience in maintenance and logistics. She has made several interesting insights into different maintenance management arrangements in the oil and gas industry and a water utility. The fieldwork mainly consists of semi-structured interviews with maintenance managers and associated staff and contractors.
CMMSs are not the only systems that drive engineering. Change management systems are closely related and Leonie is also studying aspects of engineering practice related to these systems.
Work by Leonie and others has shown that a major problem with CMMS is the relatively poor history data provided by technicians and contractors responsible for equipment maintenance. Many other aspects of these systems suffer from poor data quality as well. This project is based on the notion that these systems are constructed from a 'techno-centric' point of view. That is, they are implemented as systems that people have to adapt to, rather than the other way round. One way of looking at these systems is to view them as a communication medium between different groups of people who don't necessarily find communicating easy even in face-to-face encounters. When the communication is a medium that can only represent text and limited graphics, these communication problems may be compounded. The planning aspects of a CMMS can also be seen as an instance of 'Taylorism' - a largely discredited system of scientific management. This might also contribute many of the difficulties observed in maintenance management today.
This project will involve a detailed study of a group of individuals working with a CMMS in the early stages of application and use. Repeat visits will be required after intervals of several months to see how workplace identities shift with changing organisation and technology. A detailed understanding of how people conduct maintenance work with and without support from a CMMS should provide valuable pointers for improved ways to arrange maintenance work.
Adrian Stephan has 30 years experience in maintenance and logistics and is studying maintenance practices with ageing equipment. He has observed that ageing equipment presents special problems in terms of availability of spare parts, accumulation of small undocumented changes, and a shortage of skilled technicians capable of repairing and maintaining obsolete technologies, particularly in electronics. He has also observed a transition in maintenance practice as the firm moves from old equipment to up-to-date modern equipment and some of the issues that have arisen within the maintenance workforce as a result.
Adrian has also observed that accounting is a blind spot in maintenance practice. While routine accounting might seem simple enough, it is apparent that company accounting systems only capture direct maintnenance costs, and even this coverage is patchy and inaccurate. Indirect costs are seldom even considered yet research has shown that these costs are much higher than direct costs.
Adrian’s fieldwork is aimed at collecting interviews and making field observations for his PhD studies. However at the same time, he is a valuable source of ideas on opportunities for improvement in current maintenance and engineering practices.
We have commenced a detailed longitudinal study of our own engineering graduates who completed their courses in 2006. The aim of this study is to see how their careers develop in the early years. We survey the graduates every few weeks, with their permission, so that we can understand the work that they are doing, what they find they need to learn, why they choose certain jobs and occupations over others and why they move from one job to another. We also hope to understand why so many engineering graduates end up working in fields other than engineering.
Any company supporting this study will receive insights into issues affecting the recruitment and retention of graduates and young engineers. We have already discovered several practices that discourage graduates from applying for jobs in engineering organisations -- something that is surprising given comments from the same organisations about engineering skills shortages.
We will be seeking sponsorship from several companies so that each sponsoring firm provides a modest contribution in return for which they receive access to the data as it becomes available. They can then compare the early career development of their own graduates with those working for other companies in related industries. Approximately 200 graduates are taking part in this survey.
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Migrant Engineers In Australia
Dhyaanesh Meganathan - Honours
This paper is based on the research that migrant engineers in Australia face several adversities in gaining engineering employment in Australia. With focus on migrant engineers from Eastern Europe, the barriers facing these migrant engineers have been discovered through literature review and interviews conducted. The effectiveness and accessibility of the current forms of assistance available to these migrant engineers are highlighted and discussed. Solutions have been explored and implemented with aims to reduce their period of unemployment and improving their soft skills, thus assisting them in adapting quicker and easier to the Australian engineering industry. This has been done through the setting up of a website and the pioneering use of online workshops with Adobe Breeze Meeting.
The website serves as a main reference page with links to all available aid that has been provided for migrant engineers in Australia, accompanied by summaries and highlighted noteworthy sections,. The online workshops, conducted from Australia, for a class of graduating engineering students in Serbia, were conducted with a voice option, chat room, PowerPoint slides and video imaging of the presenter. Using the Blended learning template, these workshops have been designed to educate Eastern European engineering undergraduates on non-technical aspects of gaining engineering employment in Australia, while receiving technical knowledge at their respective educational institutions.
In conclusion, the success of these implementations are reviewed and accompanied
by proposals for future research.
Quality Control and Error Checking in Engineering Design
David Mehravari - Honours
Due to the convoluted nature of engineering design, mistakes and unanticipated problems are inevitable. These obstacles obscure project forecasts and require costly rework. To attenuate the substantial impact of these events an effective checking system is essential. However, there has been little work dedicated to investigating design checks and reviews, despite its importance. The aim of this research project is to explore and explain this enigmatic process.
This entails an investigation of the check and review system utilised by design personnel working for a particular project management and engineering consultancy firm. The organization is primarily concerned with the design of minerals processing plants and bulk materials handling equipment for a range of mining clients. The cost of engineering work may be drastically reduced with a greater understanding of design checking, so the results of this research could have substantial implications for major engineering projects.
Engineering Practice in Construction
Adrian Han - Honours
A study on engineering practice in the engineering construction industry.
Research and analysis will be conducted regarding:
- how engineers’ careers develop (i.e. what is of importance in career
development e.g. mentoring, practical experience or theoretical background
knowledge) and what makes for a ‘successful’ career,
- what tasks and roles engineers undertake within the construction industry,
and
- how they view their occupation in terms of importance (organisationally
and socioeconomically), personal satisfaction and what constitutes a ‘good’ engineer
Comparisons will be drawn between professional engineering and professional management, and the apparent division between them. Movement from engineering to management (such as project management) will also be analysed.
Personnel that will be interviewed will include project and site engineers, project managers, general managers, construction managers, human resource managers and staff, and graduate engineers. Literature will be researched and provided as a background to the engineering construction practice field.
This study aims
to determine what an engineer’s role fulfils in an engineering
construction organisation, how engineers view their role, and what career path
and choices yield a ‘successful’ career, and ultimately provide
an insight into an engineer’s role in the construction industry