Thursday
January 5th 2006 at:
Electrical and Mechanical Engineering College, National University of Science
and Technology, Rewalpindi, Pakistan.
The presentations for this workshop were all recording using lecturnity and prepared for on-line listening using Windows Media player. Each presentation includes the powerpoint slides and audio recording. The recordings have been optimized for 56k modem connections.
Note that the presentation audio recordings include question and answer sessions. Since the microphone was located near the presenter, some of the questions may only be heard very faintly.
9.30 James Trevelyan: Introduction and framework of engineering roles and results from the early interviews
10.30 Engineering maintenance management work - based on presentations by Leonie Gouws, Adrian Stephan and Ernst Krauss at the UWA Workshop on 2nd November.
11.15 Engineering work in Australia and Pakistan
12.15 Close and Refreshments
Abstracts
James Trevelyan Introduction and framework of engineering roles and results from the early interviews
We have completed around 40 interviews and this paper presents results of analysis of Australian engineering interviews in that set. We are deliberately not restricting our research to “the engineering profession”. Instead we have identified about 80 distinct roles. Example include design, ‘acceptance testing’, ‘building and leading teams’, and ‘coordinating other people’. Each role is further structured as a set of activity modes such as ‘prepare CAD models and drawings’, ‘sift through documentation and find relevant information’, prepare report(s)’, etc. We are documenting the nature of technical knowledge and where it comes from. This reveals that much of the technical knowledge that engineers need is learned after leaving university courses and most is never written down. The implications are singificant. Since technical knowledge is difficult to transfer and acquire, a lot of engineering depends on bring people with the required knowledge together and sharing it to the extent needed to solve problems, create products and provide services.
The proper maintenance of a machine requires the application of a wide range of technical and analytical skills using many technologies over many decades.
When someone repairs a machine, what knowledge is required, where does it come from and how is it learned?
This research is the analysis of maintenance work practices so that assumptions and instructions of what needs to be done are based on the reality of the job or the tasks to be accomplished is fully understood.
Bucciarelli notes that in dealing with technology that we take for granted that engineers, managers and corporate strategists don’t fully understand what they are doing.
Given the myriad of technical and analytical skills required to maintain a machine, the situation is further compounded. How does a fitter know what they are doing is right. It might work, but is it what needs to be done?
For example. Maintenance budgets often account for a significant part an organisation’s expenses. Maintenance people are usually budget driven. But, where do they learn about maintenance budgets? A quick review of the index of most accounting textbooks will show that words such as maintenance, repair, spares, etc are not included. So, we assume that accountants are not directly taught about maintenance either, so where and how do they learn about it?
Engineering Work in Australia and Pakistan
It was my experience in Pakistan that led to this research project. Here I was faced by many paradoxes. On the one hand I was witnessing a nuclear-armed state. On the other hand villages within just a few kilometres of the capital have no reliable water supply. The Moghuls that ruled this country four centuries ago provided a legacy of superb civil engineering and architecture, yet engineers today cannot even make a new building straight. Mobile telephones and the internet reach even the remotest villages where Islamic Shariah law is being re-introduced, yet before 1995 few people were even aware of what a computer was.
The main dimensions along which useful comparisons can be drawn between Pakistan and Australia:
• Views
of engineering from the outside
• Organization factors
• Technical factors
• Access to technical information
• Clients
•
Production workforce & logistics
• Engineers pay, hours, turnover
As an example, the summarized comparison for the ‘technical factors’ dimension is:
Pakistan
• Mostly applications, little technology development.
• Technical knowledge mainly from internet.
• Only basic materials and components available (e.g. mild steel, concrete).
• Little use of advanced software.
Australia
• Mostly applications, little technology development.
• Technical knowledge from clients, courses, employers, suppliers, conferences,
networking.
• Huge variety of materials, plastics, composites.
• Reliance on advanced software.
The lessons for a developing country like Pakistan are clear.
There is strong anecdotal evidence that clean potable water supplies are far more costly in many developing countries than industrialized countries. It is not difficult to calculate that potable water is too expensive for a large number of poor families, even for relatively wealthy families too. This causes poor health resulting from inability to afford water for routine hygiene purposes. Public and aid funding is being wasted on public health clinics and education programmes because water supplies are inadequate. This issue has not been addressed by multilateral agencies such as the World Bank and IMF, nor individual aid donors. Sanitation is also poor in major cities and ineffective in large areas of the developing world.
Poor housing design and construction results in high costs. In Pakistan cavity walls are rarely used and reinforced concrete is the roofing material of choice, leading to extremely poor energy efficiency and very high costs due to the necessity of transporting heavy materials. Modern design, the use of mud brick construction and light weight vegetable-based insulation materials could provide more comfort at less cost with substantial energy savings. However, it is difficult to change established habits without aggressive government incentives to train builders and building workers to perform reliable work with different materials.
Insufficient prominence and priority has been given to the cost of energy supplies in the developing world. Energy supply costs are high, typically twice as high as in industrialized competitors (based on advice from leading industrialists). In addition, the efficiency of energy utilization is low compared with industrialized countries. Also, electricity supply interruptions necessitate standby generator capacity and result in equipment damage, further increasing cost factors.
Current engineering standards of design, maintenance and production in most
of the developing world are mostly well below industrialized country standards
in both quality and productivity. However, while Indian and Pakistan (by example)
engineering graduates are not quite up to world standards, they perform very
well as migrants in industrialized country environments. Improving engineering
in the developing world will depend on early career training for engineering
graduates with international companies and large scale repatriation of skilled
artisans and technicians to train a new local engineering workforce. There
is little evidence that major improvements are needed to engineering university
training. (However, introducing ABET accreditation standards would help.) Developing
world companies need to provide internationally competitive salaries to retain
a skilled engineering workforce. Creating partnerships with world-leading engineering
companies to revitalize engineering companies is essential, obviously at the
expense of a share of local ownership and control. Raising engineering standards
is a prerequisite for improvement in water and energy supplies, sanitation,
and transport infrastructure.