Turn your thermostat down to fight climate change
With the need to reduce UK CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050, it is now very urgent to get the space-heating component of the building stock as near to zero-carbon as possible.
Up to now only insulation and double or treble glazing have been considered for housing. However, there is another means of reducing energy consumption which can make a substantial contribution. It is to reduce the thermostat setting of central heating to a healthy level of 12°C, and only increase those rooms to a higher comfortable level in daytime, when they are occupied, by means of an electrical or gas appliance. So the waste of energy from unoccupied rooms is avoided.
I call this a rational way of using central heating. Every household can benefit, but the greatest benefit is enjoyed by households in “energy poverty”, and those who live in old houses which are difficult and expensive to insulate and double glaze.
To complete the improvement of the entire stock of properties by 2050, a nationwide network of local community-owned (not-for-profit) companies is needed to deliver a minimum-cost fully integrated domestic heating service from which householders enjoy all of the value of energy saving. This is an example of creating wealth out of waste, which is the key to global sustainability and widespread prosperity.
John Davis, Swansea
Why defence costs soar
R Bullen asks why the UK wastes so much money on defence procurement (Letters, PE March). In my experience as a requirements engineering consultant, requirements are often subjective and cannot be adequately tested; there are also poor definitions so it is unclear what the customer is asking for. This results in unclear specifications which lead to cost and time overrun. Moreover, requirements are rarely linked and modelled to enable the customer to understand what the effect of changing one requirement will have on the rest.
Help has been at hand for some years now and used successfully in some defence projects. The Generic Model Approach to Requirements Capture (G-MARC) enables requirements to be captured, engineered, modelled and managed effectively, so reducing risk to time and budget. Sadly, the Ministry of Defence no longer uses the G-MARC technology.
With regard to why this waste of money does not go on in other countries, I suspect that it does but maybe their governments are not as open as ours and their press not as fearless!
Charlie Field, Southsea
Poor project control
R Bullen seeks explanations as to why defence projects are run in an unsatisfactory manner (Letters, PE March). I am only able to make observations about one company in this business.
Firstly, the customer expresses their requirements in an incomplete and ambiguous manner, with changes of requirements during the life of the projects. Secondly, the company has an almost total absence of effective project control, aided and abetted by accountants with an obsession with cost cutting, but with no comprehension whatsoever of the costs of improper and inadequate engineering.
Thirdly, senior executives only seem to understand Powerpoint engineering. Fourthly, the documentation will never use one document when two or more will do. Lastly, young engineers are recruited according to their “fluffiness coefficient” rather than knowledge and ability.
Any one of the above is a problem, but the combination makes progress painful, and expensive, with the resulting products being much less good than they could be.
Ian Sheppard, Bedford
Shedding vehicle weight
Minimum vehicle weight is a good thing, and the engineering to achieve it is fantastic (“Weight watchers,” PE March). So where is the logic in carrying around a big heavy battery, or indeed with a hybrid a big heavy battery plus a tank of fuel?
I suspect that, as with all government-led initiatives, we are being led up the garden path in favouring hybrids and electrics. These are the people who encouraged us to buy diesels and burn woodchips!
A Which? report showed that a Toyota Rav4 diesel was environmentally better than its hybrid brother in town, but much worse on a long journey. When I was purchasing tyres my dealer noted that a big hybrid Mercedes had to have its rear tyres replaced at 8,000 miles, much worse than a diesel equivalent, presumably owing to weight.
There is no universal solution – it depends where you drive. I do some around-town driving and a lot of 200-mile journeys. My preferred option to replace my 13-year-old Passat diesel would be a supercharged small petrol engine car that could take advantage of the beautifully engineered weight savings on offer.
Colin Warburton, Stockton-on-Tees
How NHS could spend less
Paul Hogg makes many excellent points in discussing engineering in the NHS (Letters, PE March). For a while I led a team in the Property Services supplies division where my engineers organised contracts for items commonly required in government buildings including those occupied by the military. This included a vast range of things, from kettles to switchgear.
A series of “call off” contracts negotiated by competitive tender from approved firms meant that those who needed the items did not have to write specifications and go to tender but could call off items in small quantities at the cheaper bulk price. I think the NHS could benefit from a similar organisation.
Unfortunately Margaret Thatcher decided there were too many civil servants and the supplies division was axed. I moved to the museums and galleries group in the London region to lead engineers in the major engineering in these buildings. After a few years this too was axed. The thinking was that the directors responsible for the collections could also look after the buildings, despite the fact that they had no previous experience.
Alfred Reading, Surrey
Collecting flight data
It must be deeply distressing for the relatives and friends of the passengers and crew of the Boeing 777 of Malaysia Airlines, flight MH370, that the search for the wreckage in the sea has been called off.
Recovery of the so-called “black box” flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, which preserve the history of the flight parameters and cockpit sounds respectively, would possibly have provided evidence of what happened. This might have given some comfort to the bereaved.
In this day of electronic wizardry, is it not possible for such data to be transmitted by an automated wireless telemetry communications process, from aircraft to remote receiving stations, or even satellites, for subsequent access in the event of an aviation disaster?
Whilst it would be impracticable for such transmissions to take place for every flight, they could be triggered by crew in an emergency. Receiving stations, or satellite databases, could be set up worldwide.
Richard Lloyd points to modelling as a way of finding a missing airliner (Letters, PE February). Perhaps there are other ways.
Robert Cusins, Northleach, Gloucestershire