A Question For All

Only today have I been asked a very serious question:

Should the Government appoint a chief engineer to represent and advise the Government on engineering matters?

What do people think?

appointed by their selection or a more democratic way? Its the same as all the other "experts" that can be pressured to sway and then be a scapegoat later in case of failure.

as Lopsum states, do it by selection, to have 1 for all engineering genres then NO!

Absolutly no. Every advisor previously appointed by the government is there
for one purpose only - to endorse whatever suits the minsters whether for
political or financial gains.

My answer was actually a resounding NO, there are 37 Institutions for engineering alone and I am an honourary member of two of them for mechanical and civil engineering. Nobody in them wants one member for every mechanical discipline as there are over 100 engineering disciplines and each of them has numerous sub divisions, an example would be civil engineering which has multiple sub divisions and one would be structural engineering. Is it civil or mechanical?

Take an average bridge, a concrete bridge would have a sub structure called reinforcing and today these are fabricated sections of heavy steel designed and manufactured by mechanical engineers and passed by structural engineers, but are they civil or mechanical. Then they are fastened together and if it is purely a steel bridge it is purely mechanical, if the sub structure is purely a reinforcing it is then encased in poured concrete which is done by civil engineers, so both disciplines inextricably linked. Then it needs topping with a road surface and this is purely a civil discipline, then the furniture is designed and made by mechanical engineers, then we get the electrics, electrical engineering, this would include lighting for the bridge and its road signs, if there are telematics such as sensors for lighting and traffic monitoring then electronic engineers are involved, so four major engineering disciplines for one simple bridge.

Engineering is inextricably linked to all its disciplines and many other associated fields such as materials technologists and sciences, the scientists produce a new material such as a coating, the materials technologists then figure how to manufacture it cost effectively and they work with mechanical engineers to apply it, one example would be the current profile sheets for building cladding.

No one chief engineer could have all that knowledge in all those disciplines; for it to be slightly effective it would require a large team of engineers from numerous disciplines to even grasp the basic concepts of all these fields. If this was as a Government advisory role it would be little more than flanneling and blagging your way through something you know nothing about.

Political role? certainly not as it would be a taxpayer funded position and undoubtedly well paid position with the gold plated benefits, and it couldn't be an impartial position as every major industry would be looking at them for any chink in their armour and trying to exploit it for their own benefit. There is obvious bias as the chief would favour his particular discipline and this would be to the detriment of other, and possibly other disciplines with better solutions.
If engineers had their say, none of the politically motivated major projects of the last decade (or more) would have happened as they would not be economically viable and one example are the numerous PPI and PFI projects and a current example would be HS2.

Engineers are logical people and work on facts and not mass hysteria and in almost every case, finances, if their is no financial case for a project then it doesn't happen as there is no viable benefit; politicians on the other hand work on B/S and say what people want to hear and are large corporations puppets.
This raises the next issue of impartiality, if they are moved to such a position under the Con-servatives then they will be removed by the Lie-bour party when they take office and they will be paid handsomely to leave without a fuss and undoubtedly keep all their benefits and the costs will never be released. This means they are politically motivated and will go to great lengths to work for, or on behalf of their party to retain such a well rewarded job, we now have lost impartiality and nepotism has crept in and forget engineering simply to keep the taxpayer money coming into their pocket.

They actually have a name PUPPETS or STOOGES.

Suddenly we find work which could be undertaken by British engineers will be farmed abroad to foreign engineers due solely to costs and the accountants have won, but put this into context, if one project directly employs 1000 people then it is 1000 people paying tax and NI contributions, the employer is also paying 1000 employees NI and employers pay more NI then the employee does, so all this income is lost. If this company has 100 major companies supplying goods and services and each of these companies employs 100 employees then it is 10,000 people paying tax and NI and the treasury loses this income, so for a final figure account which may save the treasury a few £million on capital costs, they also lose the long term income from 11,000 people for many years and that few £million they are spending abroad means they are losing much more over the long term. In addition they are also having to bolster the unemployment budget as they all need paying benefits, so another loss, and we only look at coal mining to see how many local shops went under and have never resurfaced, economics aint complicated, just manipulated to look good.

Apologies for the late input. I don’t seem to always receive notifications!

But agreed with most; no the government should not!

I don't think there's necessarily a skill or experience issue. A top engineer will be familiar with sanity checking, managing and quality controlling the work of others even from different engineering disciplines. That's part of management. For example I can easily tell good science from bad, even in areas outside my own.

However from a political point of view having a single appointed person is a bad idea. Why would one be needed, what would his remit be and how would he be chosen? And a danger that a politically controlled person would appear to gain unwarranted authority simply by virtue of his appointment.