More often than not on projects, the efforts of my practice and my staff are directed by people who are not engineers. Generally, we are appointed to a project some months after it has begun and the very first thing we are told is that all the information they need from us is ‘urgent’.
What this implies is that we are required to produce information and documentation more quickly than we would normally do and we will have to get it right first time. Very often, this requirement is not advised to us when we first submit our fee proposal. This need for urgency is often artificial – the project leader continually tries to push us into tighter and tighter deadlines when, in fact, the building foundations have not even been completed. Often excavations for the foundations will still be under way.
We do understand that a building should not be delayed for want of design information. What we do not understand is why the information is to be produced under such pressure so early on in the project. If I question this, the project leader will tell us: “You don’t want the building to be late, do you?” and the contractor will tell us (with a deep sigh) that there is a very long lead time on some items.
All this we know. But none of it is relevant. But sooner or later, it becomes clear: the client has borrowed money to build a building and the quicker it is built, the less interest the client has to pay the bank. Thus, the entire engineering of the building finishes is done in a hurry to save money.
Very frequently, the client has no long-term view of what is built. The building goes up and, within 30 years, is demolished or sold on. All that remains is the profit made by the client. Engineers do not have a view like this: they want the building to be of a high-quality standard and to last forever. This is an idea that goes back as far as the early Middle Ages. Construction of cathedrals in the UK and the rest of Europe was not quick. However, nearly all of them have survived, some for over 1 000 years. Engineers do not think that work done in a hurry can ever be good. The notion that money is more important than good engineering reminds them of crayfish in a bucket: always climbing over each other to try to get to the top.
Engineers who work in industry feel isolated from management. They know that, if they maintain equipment properly, it should last forever. Management feels that maintenance is an unnecessary expense and that the equipment should be driven as hard as possible – to the point of near destruction. Again, the reason is money: the harder the equipment is worked, the greater the production. The greater the production, the bigger the management bonus.
I once worked in a refinery where the shutdown was two months every second year. A new manager was appointed and he immediately proclaimed that the shutdown would now be moved to two months every fourth year. He quickly became the ‘golden boy’. But there was a price: when we got to the shutdown, so much of the plant was so damaged that it took an additional two months to repair and start up again.
It seems to me that those in management lose sight of what they are doing. They seem to think that machinery can be commanded and motivated. That machinery has a soul. They are right: it does, but it is an engineering soul, not a management soul. As all engineers know, if machinery is not treated well, it will fight back.
The reason for this discourse is the hope that some manager will read it and appreciate the concept I am putting forward: that to do engineering in a hurry is not a good idea, to make something urgent that is not urgent is a bad idea and to think that machinery can be commanded to a person’s will is wrong. Motivation based on money is for financial businesses. Motivation based on money in the industrial and built environment is stupid.