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Engineers bring economic benefit to their employers. In this episode, we talk with Professor James Trevelyan about the value of engineers in the workplace.

• While the word “value” has many meanings, Chris has an immediate desire to interpret it in terms of dollars and cents.
• Engineers obviously provide some economic value, as employers continue handing out paychecks to their engineers.
• Jeff has run across the Big Beacon Manifesto, which describes an idealized goal for engineering education.
• Our guest is James Trevelyan, a professor of Mechatronics at the University of Western Australia.
• Relatively few studies of engineering practice have been conducted, perhaps because such investigations require a merging of anthropological and technical skills.
• Unlike medical students, most engineering students don’t get a chance to work “in the field” before receiving their degrees.
• Tacit knowledge has been relegated to second-class status since the times of the Greek philosophers, with messy realities being considered less “pure” than Platonic forms embodied by explicit knowledge.
• Engineering education moved from being practice-based to science-based around 1950, following World War II.
• Since practical knowledge is no longer being handed down in large companies, much of the tacit knowledge of engineering is being lost.
• An example of lost knowledge is the inability of the U.S. space program to recreate the Saturn V rocket.
• Engineering students start leveraging useful skills, such as social networking, while still in school, but they consider the use of such talents as only “semi-legitimate.”
• Jeff recalls an MIT study indicating engineers learn most of their day-to-day working skills in industry.
• Regardless of experience or title, about 60% of an engineer’s time is spent in direct interactions with other people.
• One explanation for why engineers exhibit such a high level of interaction may be that the engineering profession requires distributed cognition.
• James references a book about constructing the Canal du Midi in Southern France, which required a collective effort.
• Engineers largely succeed or fail on their ability to get individuals with needed skills and knowledge to contribute those assets at the right time, and in the proper manner.
• James wrote a paper on engineering collaboration, titled “Technical Coordination in Engineering Practice” (pdf), in the July 2007 issue of the Journal of Engineering Education (vol. 96, no.3, pp. 191–204).
• Engineers spend approximately 30% of their time coordinating the activities of others.
• Engineers have shorthand methods of communicating technical ideas, as depicted in the book, Designing Engineers, authored by MIT professor Louis L. Bucciarelli.
• James refers to a paper he recently presented at the Frontiers in Education 2012 Conference, held in Seattle, Washington. It is titled “Understandings of Value in Engineering Practice,” and should soon be available to those with a subscription to IEEE Xplore.
• German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe identified that as we think about something, our ideas representing that thing shift and move. In his book Scientific Studies, Goethe writes, “How difficult it is…to refrain from replacing the thing with its sign, to keep the object alive before us instead of killing it with the word.”
• We need to be aware that others, especially those from other disciplines, may assign entirely different meanings to words and phrases. Even across related engineering fields, similar words may elicit concepts that diverge in crucial respects.
• Engineers are typically unaware of the economic value they bring to an enterprise.
• Engineers produce significant value by reducing the project risk perceived by financial investors.
• In her book Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, American philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes the case that today’s college education has become overly focused on economic opportunities, at the expense of critical and empathetic thinking.
• A framework for understanding why individual investors perceive similar conditions as presenting differing levels of risk is expectancy value theory.
• Chris mentions Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, which suggests that people are strongly motivated by autonomy, purpose, and mastery, but not so much by economic gain.
• In Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being, authors George Akerloff and Rachel Kranton discuss how social identity influences economic decision-making.
• When possible, it is beneficial to talk to both customers and end-users.
• James suggests that listening is a very important skill for engineers, and one that can be learned.
• The first chapter of People Skills: How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts, by Robert Bolton, contains useful instruction on learning to listen.
• Mobile phones have been an engineering success in many developing countries.
• Management skills are an important part of engineering work. However, most managerial training offers only an abstract introduction to the practical capabilities needed in industrial practice.
• As we discover more about how individuals learn, we may need to rebuild the intellectual foundations of engineering, so as to allow a broader distribution of engineering knowledge, and a deeper understanding of engineering methods.
• James Trevelyan can be reached via the email address listed on his website.

Thanks to peasap for the photo titled “George is Keeping an Eye On You!” Podcast theme music provided by Paul Stevenson