Qantas emergency landing....

[dugy]

Originally Posted by mark_rattigan

Some guy I had to deal with at work had "Customer Service Engineer" as his job title on the Corporate Directory - I cringed.

Mum used to be a "Domestic Engineer".
Then she got a real job.

[Flyboy]

Originally Posted by dugy

Internet failed. Forgot the emoticon thingy.

Righto then!

[Spock]

Hey, it occurs to me that Valentino Rossi has neither medical qualifications nor a PhD (as far as I'm aware) and yet he calls himself 'The Doctor'.

- and what do I care?

- so long as I never see his curly hair and monkey ears sticking out from behind a surgical mask just before I black out from the anaesthetic!

[nath]

Originally Posted by Spock

Hey, it occurs to me that Valentino Rossi has neither medical qualifications nor a PhD (as far as I'm aware) and yet he calls himself 'The Doctor'.

Actually... Rossi has an honorary Doctorate in Communications from the University of Urbino

[mark_rattigan]

Originally Posted by Spock

your full title would be ... 'engineering associate'

Originally Posted by Flyboy

Oh, just found this out.....

Under the new EASA system, we'll be eligible for an Associates Degree

Search For a Course - Course Details*

Bingo - Engineering Associates

[DaveR6]

its this simple. the role of an engineer is to do the design for a solution to a problem. see Engineer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for a full explanation.

the engineer's role is not to fabiracte or build the solution.

no engineer is saying he is better than anyone else. its just the person who does the fabrication/construction/maintainence etc is NOT an engineer. i have no doubt they are trained well in their feild of expertise.

[Aphex]

Wiki- its gospel... beleive it

[DaveR6]

of course i just edited that article to suit my purposes

[Flyboy]

In addition to design and research and development, many engineers work in testing, production, or maintenance

Even Wiki agrees with me!

And yes, I'm just stirring the last bit of life out of this thread.

[ByfordBlade]

Over my 15 years of being a "qualified engineer" I have learnt more from the blokes on the tools than I did at uni or from textbooks. I employ designers who don't have BEng quals but know more about civil engineering than most qualified engineers I've come across. I get shitty when certain industries which involve an element of thinking and decision making feel it appropriate to call themselves engineers e.g. some security firms over east advertise for "crowd control engineers", but equally I thought one of the biggest wanks I've ever been through was getting my Chartered Professional Engineer status as the whole process seemed nothing more than passing a nerdy initiation to the IEAust club, albiet without a secret handshake.

For the record Dave, do you call the blokes who design fairings for your bikes engineers because they design them to be aerodynamic, or is it a lesser qualification because they are obviously not designed to be asphaltdynamic and many of yours have proven that theory

And since it's been a while - your mum. (you know her, the bedroom entertainment engineer).

I don't give a fat rats what the person maintaining the plane I'm flying in calls themselves, just as long as they have the training and skills to keep it 10km above sea level for extended periods of time then I'm happy.

[Spock]

Originally Posted by ByfordBlade

do you call the blokes who design fairings for your bikes engineers because they design them to be aerodynamic, or is it a lesser qualification

Industrial designers.

Just to clarify, (university qualified) engineers by definition work with mathematics (and here I'm not talking about basic arithmetic) and scientific principles to solve problems.

People who work in the engineering field and do any of the following jobs:

1) project management
2) contract administration
3) 'catalogue engineers'
4) sell engineering equipment
5) physically fabricate or maintain equipment

...need not have university qualifications to do their job well.

However, there are times when being a university qualified engineer can be critical.

Case in point was the early American astronauts. At the time many test pilots like Chuck Yeager thought it was unfair that one of the prerequisites for consideration for astronaut training was an engineering degree.

Turns out the qualification proved to be essential when the Apollo 13 accident occurred and Jim Lovell had to recalculate their trajectory using a slide rule.

An error in the calculations (or worse, a complete inability to do the maths) would have led to the death of the 3 Apollo 13 astronauts.

Luckily, Jim got his sums right and the rest is history.

This incident is one of many that vindicated NASA's decision to choose only (university qualified) engineers to be astronauts (among other abilities) - not because engineers are special or superhuman - but because they have the training to do the job.

[Spock]

Originally Posted by ByfordBlade

I employ designers who don't have BEng quals but know more about civil engineering than most qualified engineers I've come across.

What do you employ them to design out of interest? I'm willing to bet they don't design anything original but instead 'design' things using the step-by-step instructions in the Australian standards.

The Australian standards have a standard for just about everything used in the WA mining and offshore oil and gas industries - from toilet blocks to wire fences, to every kind of foundation, etc. etc.

And who designed the Australian standards? University trained engineers that's who. And don't even get me started on things like Space Shuttles and other original designs.

It pisses me off when people say "I know an engineer straight out of uni and he can't weld and doesn't know how to check the oil in a Haulpak".
My answer is "Yes, you're right, he can't - but can you solve partial differential equations?"

[DaveR6]

Originally Posted by ByfordBlade

For the record Dave, do you call the blokes who design fairings for your bikes engineers because they design them to be aerodynamic, or is it a lesser qualification because they are obviously not designed to be asphaltdynamic and many of yours have proven that theory

clearly my bikes werent designed by engineers....if they were, they would have training wheels

[ByfordBlade]

Originally Posted by Spock

What do you employ them to design out of interest? I'm willing to bet they don't design anything original but instead 'design' things using the step-by-step instructions in the Australian standards.

The Civil Designers I employ mostly model earthworks, roads, rail alignments, drainage, sewers, etc. No question that all design is to appropriate Standards, but I give these sorts of blokes a bit of credit as they are a lot more skilled than tracers or pure drafters. If you look at the development of most Australian Standards they have involved input from a number of "experts" and not all are engineers.

In the late 90's I was a graduate engineer with BHP and asked the companies Principal Civil Engineer what it was we all do now that CAD modelling packages were appearing through the offices and the designers seemed to be generating all the designs. His answer was they come up with the options, engineers use their training, skills and experience to make sure the correct one is picked.

I agree that there are times you need uni qualified engineers to solve complex problems, but equally I've worked with and employed a few who are excellent on the theory but have no idea about the practicalities of their designs in terms of constructability, safety, etc. Some of the biggest fuck ups in history have been uni qualified engineered.

[sathid]

Chernobyl - case in point.

However there has been a couple of big ones where a qualified engineer might have made the difference. The Longford gas plant explosion is one, and the Bhopal incident is another IIRC.

It might be one thing designing structures, as perhaps the drafters and engineers roles are slightly more closely related. However how many drafters or technicians do you think could design a chemical processing plant?

One thing that this argument has always bugged me "Oh, I've been working on X piece of equipment for years and can't count the number of engineers who I've had to show how to use it"
a) you've been working on it for years
b) it's ONE piece of equipment in ONE plant
c) you might be able to make it work optimally, but do you understand how that affects all of the upstream and downstream equipment, and how it affects the economics of the process?

You've got good skilled tradesmen, and crap engineers. But there are plenty of good engineers and crap skilled tradesmen too.

They aren't the same thing, and it's pretty pointless to try to compare them. If we didn't need either one, we wouldn't have them. We have them both, so there is obviously a need for both sets of skills.

[TRX]

PDF'd Photos of the plane.

QF "Shit your pants"

[Brougham]

nothing there trxxy

[TRX]

try now

[g0zer]

Originally Posted by TRX

PDF'd Photos of the plane.

QF "Shit your pants"

lucky they didnt lose all the core runs that i assume used to be in a cable tray.. wonder how critical all that I/O is, that was just flapping about next to jagged torn steel.

[T-roy]

what was that piece of metal that seem to be stuck in to the plane next to the door?