I was talking to the manager of a refinery. He had qualified as an engineer and had risen through the ranks.

I asked him how he liked his job and he said, well, not much. He said he had come to the conclusion that he was no more an engineer – he was now a manager and an accountant. But, he said, wistfully, when he was younger, he had not played games that involved bookkeeping – rather he played games that involved engineering-type things, such as building radios and loudspeakers and stuff.

Now that he was in management, yes, he had done an MBA, but there was no fun in it – constantly being harassed over profit margins and production quotas. The worst was, he said, he knew the refinery backwards – the history of each plant, of each project, who built it, what the limits were, and so on.

So he knew he could run the refinery at its most profitable long-term production level. Ah, but there is that term: ‘long term’. He was always being pushed to run the thing at maximum level and he knew that some parts of the plant just could not take it and would break. It did so, often, creating more stress, emergency meetings, and so on. The main thing was that, financially, his job was a dream; as an engineer, it was boring, irritating and stressful.

I find this so often – the world is increasingly being run by accounting types, who simplify engineering to the point that they think they understand it (which is really quite simple) and then they believe that they actually understand how some fairly complex plant works and then engage in arguments with engineers about how the plant can be made to work better. They frequently do not know that the plant design is based on the distilled wisdom of the engineering fraternity and that changing anything or working anything harder is probably not a good idea, since it has been tried before and did not work (or at worst failed catastrophically).

A further problem is that most engineers are good at describing engineering things but few are good teachers, especially of laymen. Thus, if an accountant or financial person demands an explanation as to why some part of the plant cannot produce more, the engineer loses the argument and is forced to go back and do something the engineer does not think is safe or right.

The main point is that most engineers are not interested in business. They are keen on being paid adequately (and may even accept overpayment with a gracious shrug) but they are not interested in running a business. I know I have to run mine and, for me, it is a burden, not a joy.

Then, with increasing interconnectivity, it is noting for a client to ask the engineer, prior to appointment, for vendor application forms, black economic-empowerment certificates, tax clearance certificates, letters of good standing with the compensation commissioner, letters of Sector Education and Training Authority contributions . . . all of which cut into the time for doing engineering. The persons asking for all this paperwork are really just creating a computer empire that makes sure that every single order is linked to some other action and so on – it certainly does not get one paid any more swiftly.

I think what we need is a return to the ‘Gold Mining Management System’ of my early twenties. In this system, the GM was the top dog and watched over all things. A manager ran the mining part of the operation, another manager production and processing, while a resident engineer ran the engineering side of things. Very seldom, in my experience, did the resident engineer become a GM. It was okay – it was not what was wanted. But now, these days, the engineers are forced into management, where they are well paid but do badly, or managers take over engineering, which is just as bad. The worst of the whole issue is that it is possible to get some plants to run forever (I know some that are 65 years old), but you have to ask why they are so reliable. This knowledge is seeping away and that is not good.