I have two offices!

Last week I started working part time at WalterFedy, a consulting engineering firm in Kitchener that I had the pleasure of working with for two of my co-op terms, once in the mechanical department and the other in the civil department. Had I not been able to get NSERC funding for the USRA in the fall, I could have gone back to them for a co-op job since I liked their scope of work, the quality of work, and the office environment. When I had figured out that I'd have some time to spare before and after my travels this summer, I contacted them to some work, provided it would would around travels plans, finishing up my research work with the viscous damper and the new research work concerning the aluminum bridge as my masters' project.

It felt comfortable coming back, so much so that Brian taped a note to my monitor with the projects with work to be done, some of them were the same jobs as I had worked on 2 summers ago, though instead of the prelim design, they are now in the construction addenda stage. I got paraded around with the co-ops so that made me feel a little funny. Civil definitely has a busy summer ahead, I definitely won't be lacking in work despite there being one CAD student and one field/engineering student. The department is about 30% bigger than I remember it 2 years ago and the work is just increasing because they brought in some people with some pretty interesting niche talents.

At the same time, I have been looking to get the lab tests done on the viscous damper at UW. Apparently the department may already have some of the gear so I may be able to just patch the pieces they have rather than ordering all new stuff. Chances are it'd be a shorter wait time, ha.

I had made a quick stop at my office after my physio appointment, and sitting there made me sad that the shelving above my head was so dusty and disorganized. That is no longer a problem :) I like have a clean and organized work space. Taking care of both offices is kinda fun, I'm building up my emergency food reserves, the way I arrange stuff for super maximum efficientcy.

On the topic of arranging stuff, I should start thinking of how to pack smart for my trip... :D I'm so excited it's so soon!

My engineering dichotomy...

I find the topics I study and work with (structural and geotech stuff the most) really interesting and useful. I guess I define my sense of usefulness for my studies by how much I can better the world around me. See, what I like about civil engineering is that there's a very short metaphorical distance between what you design and what happens in the real world, that's fantastic in my opinion (though we very much need the theorists and researchers in our world). Designing a massive building would not fall into my definition of usefulness since I really believe that the best designs return the earth to their natural conditions or complement the natural surroundings as much as possible.

My issues with engineering arise from the societies that isolate engineers and the profession from the rest of the population. The professional organizations establish the code of ethics that engineers need to abide by, which sounds perfectly legitimate considering the impact of what they design. Where I start to question them is when they take so much pride in displaying the legal issues of people claiming to be engineers, or when an engineer is exposed for gross violations of the code of ethics. I feel as though the engineering organizations and societies instill a sense of cultish secrecy, and then they wonder why not enough people (women for example) are joining. Myself still looking from the outside, why would a woman feel completely comfortable in a field where the societies perpetuate a "gentleman's club" atmosphere? flawed logic I know, but I get that feeling sometimes. I think the reasoning is that you want to keep the societies as a think tank for those trained to think in diverse ways and to keep the profession honest means to kinda close it off to the public. It doesn't have to be this way, it's their current model because people are apathetic or approve of the way things are currently. At the same time, professional engineering is trying to reach out...I don't know seems a little too much like our current closed-door government for my liking.

So that's where my thinking is at for engineering, and why I feel that staying in school will a) let me avoid the parts I do not like b) delay my entry to the industry until I perhaps come to terms with the dichotomy or c)...something else I have not thought of. I spent a while mulling this post over though it's still not complete, there's soo much on this topic I want to explore.

The real world of engineering

I happen to attend a friend's birthday picnic where a lot of my high school friends and acquaintances made the majority of the group. Through talking with a few of them, my friend Molly especially, I find I am really not alone when it comes to being disillusioned with the industry for which we are studying. In her case, she gets the concepts of honesty, fairness, accuracy, and integrity of journalism repeated to her, and she sees a lack of it when it comes to examples in real life.

Though I really enjoy learning the concepts of civil engineering (thus far), some of my co-op experiences have left a sour taste in my mouth regarding how the system works in practice. I've seen probably the more dishonest side of engineering consulting, where I've seen the engineers I work with make deals under the table with clients to win a bid, or to avert government fees, or even designing an aspect of a job in which the engineer has absolutely no experience. It just doesn't seem right, nothing stops these people, and their stamp seals the deal. The engineering stamp carries a lot of legal responsibility, meaning that they stake their job on the honest and integrity of the documents stamped. Through very strong objection, I've had major projects sent out to a city for permit where the engineer stamped and signed the drawings without review. Though this was a very unique and extreme situation with this engineer, I still can't believe there are such people practicing and designing infrastructure that society uses.

Another issue I find with engineering in the industry is how lazy everything is. We learn in school about new materials, new ways of approaching design and how they are more thorough than the tried and true methods. I get to my co-ops, and all the jobs involve a copy and paste of specifications, design ideas, or even parts drawn in AutoCAD from previous projects. What's even more interesting is that the projects they are being copied have been submitted, but they are not built yet, meaning that sure the idea passed the review on paper, but they could be perpetuating a bad idea or something the construction guys know from experience that cannot be done or that there's a better way. For example, pipes that would seem to fit in the ceiling together nicely may not jig nicely when it comes to the physical installation due to tolerances in error, which is very common.

This just all makes me want to return to university of grad school or more, because I'm not comfortable with the real world yet, I feel as an undergrad, I wouldn't have the expertise to be able to change it, because that is very much a goal of mine. I don't want the status quo, even if I make a very small bubble of influence around me, I want to know that engineers can be more hard-working than they are and put less emphasis the dollar values of their projects and their wallets at the end of the day.