We should spell out what we want from Brexit
I was interested in your Editor’s comment advocating a post-Brexit plan for engineering and industry (PE July). While I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of the various bodies involved acting in a concerted way rather than individually, I’m not so sure about formulating an actual plan in advance of knowing the terms of the settlement – or settlements.
Furthermore, the chances of getting all of the parties to agree on a particular plan sounds, to say the least, optimistic. However that need not mean that they should sit back and do nothing in the meantime.
Surely they should be doing whatever possible to ensure that the settlements take proper account of the needs of engineering, and in this it seems to me that the IMechE is in an excellent position to play a full part.
Thanks to the reputation the institution has built up for producing high-quality reports on topical issues, it could offer to help produce one for the industry, to be submitted to those responsible for the negotiations .
While not attempting an actual plan, it could list what are considered the essential requirements and priorities of any settlements, from an engineering point of view.
The chances of getting agreement on such a list strike me as not too fanciful, and moreover, by having the weight of all the bodies behind it, can only help its chances of being taken seriously. This leaves the questions of who should start the ball rolling and how long it would take?
As regards the first, why not our president? And as regards the second, he’d better get cracking!
Ian Berry, Enfield, Middlesex
Heavyweight lifting
In your News report about a solar aircraft pioneering a transatlantic crossing, you said that the plane weighs the same as a standard family car – 2,300kg (PE July). That’s Range Rover Sport territory. Our family car weighs 1,040kg.
Ken Strachan, Nuneaton, Warwickshire
Unattainable accuracy
I read with interest the article stating that the National Audit Office has challenged High-Speed 2 over the costs and schedule of phase one (News, PE July).
The audit office says that the forecast cost of £27,384 million could be exceeded by
£204 million.
Who generates these numbers? To say that the forecast cost of a project as complex as HS2 will be a number to the nearest million is ridiculous. I cut my teeth in project management with a large oil major, and if we had presented a project of the scale of HS2 to the investment board with a completion date 10 years out with any numbers other than £25 billion or £30 billion we would have been laughed out of the room.
I remember when HS2 was forecast at £32.1 billion and that was for the entire scope. Good job someone didn’t forget £0.1 billion tacked on top of the 32!
Steve Elliott
Role models needed
I was encouraged to read Dawn Bonfield’s words highlighting the very real and enduring, but often ignored, reality that a career in engineering for women is “like a hurdles race” (“Drive for diversity,” PE July).
She says: “The first hurdle is stereotyping at school and gender-stereotyped toys. Getting through university unscathed is another hurdle, then there is the maternity/career-break hurdle. When people fall at these hurdles, there are fewer who make it to the end of the race” and achieve a long term career in engineering.
I do not agree with Dawn that the only solution for gender equality in engineering is to have an increased number on the start line before a tipping point could be initiated. Relying on creating a magic number of new participants necessitates the lost career potential of most of the women who come before this magic number.
When you ask parents to encourage their daughters to commit to many years of training to become engineers, should we also tell them that their career potential may simply be cannon fodder in the hope of helping those who come after them?
I believe the career choices of young women are most often inspired by seeing women in their community with secure, respected, senior positions in education, healthcare, local government, business and engineering.
Surely we can dismantle the hurdles, and offer more inclusive career pathways and employment procedures to ensure that the talented women engineers we already have stay in engineering, progress appropriately, don’t have to take prematurely short career breaks or compromise on available care, and in this way inspire the next generation (and their parents).
Anonymous
The facts on CPD
As chair of the IMechE CPD assessment committee, I just wanted to correct some of the misunderstandings evident in the letters printed in PE July, relating to the article entitled “Life-long learning” (PE June).
There is no requirement to record CPD monthly – it will be assessed annually for those selected for assessment.
The IMechE is supporting CPD through formal and informal learning, paid and free events, volunteering and organising activities to name but a few examples.
CPD may or may not be technical depending on where you are in your career and what you are aiming for in the future. You are best placed to know what is appropriate for you.
There are no plans for new categories of membership and we hope no one feels threatened by the changes which are driven by the Engineering Council.
CPD has been a requirement for members for many years (see the IMechE code of conduct that we all signed up to when we became members). The only difference now is that we may be asked to provide evidence.
For further detail see CPD FAQs on the IMechE website.
Penny Taylor, Solihull, West Midlands
Round it up or down
Are other members of our (presumably numerate) profession annoyed (as I am) by the absurdly precise numbers given to quantities that can only be known approximately?
The article “The winds of change” says wind energy provided 34.01TWh in 2015 in the UK, and (in huge letters) quotes wasted wind power in northern China as 3.39TWh (PE July). I’m sure neither quantity is really known to an accuracy of more than two significant figures, so it is particularly absurd when each of the quoted numbers is so close to a round number.
Martin Quick, Stroud
Platooning practicalities
Antony Kaye states that you need a police escort if a truck load is over 4.9m wide, and this limits transport of modular housing (Letters, PE May).
I point out you need a civilian escort and a permit for loads over 2.9m. You also need an escort and permit for very long loads, which brings me to the second topic.
In the same issue of PE was an article on the platooning of lorries. Will we need an escort and permit as above? Now we have a very long truck, which you overtake while covering a long distance. Will the driver of the second truck give way to the overtaker if said overtaker wants to turn off? Or will we have more frustrated motorists?
Jack Moore, Sorrento, Italy
We should stand united
Jim Stark rightly states that the multidisciplinary nature of engineering projects is hardly new (Letters, PE July).
At university, I graduated in engineering science, a multidisciplinary course. Like Jim, my work since the 1960s has covered more than one kind of engineering. In working on London Underground electric rolling stock I soon learned that even that one part of railway engineering covers electrical, mechanical and structural disciplines. I became chartered through the Institution of Electrical Engineers, but also joined the IMechE, and I have maintained membership of both institutions ever since.
With Tyne & Wear Metro, I was put in charge of the test track which operated before the system was opened to passengers. All the railway disciplines were involved in the testing. In the final part of my career, with HM Railway Inspectorate, I also found myself dealing with all aspects of railways and tramways, so multidisciplinary are they.
Sarah Broadhurst’s Archive article (in the same issue of PE) on past president Hay Frederick Donaldson (who died in 1916) shows how a mechanical engineer even then could find himself dealing with mixed disciplines on an electric tramway, railways and civil engineering on a canal.
What I have therefore found frustrating is what I see as artificial boundaries that have caused the various engineering institutions to remain jealously separate. The time is really well overdue for them to come together.
Can the Engineering Council bring that about, or are there still too many vested interests in the individual institutions?
David W Thornton, Newcastle upon Tyne
Barrage faces barriers
Upon reading the letter from Edward Grist proposing the construction of the Severn barrage, my immediate response was… no, not again (PE July). The ink is hardly dry on the last report that rejected the idea.
The problem with renewable schemes such as the barrage that engineers should recognise more readily than accountants or other professionals is their intermittency.
In the case of the barrage we have to accept that at many inconvenient times in each month power production drops to zero at times of high demand. At most, the barrage is predicted to generate power for only eight hours per day.
The adverse conclusions drawn in the Central Electricity Generating Board analysis over 40 years ago are still valid today – the engineering difficulties that would be introduced are greater than those that would be ameliorated.
Almost every working day, electricity demand increases by 10,000MW between 6am and 8am. This power demand is balanced by governor adjustment and grid control staff bringing in controllable thermal plants. The output of the Severn barrage would be regularly declining by 3,000-4,000MW over the same timeframe.
The collapse of system frequency could then only be prevented by bringing in an additional group of open-circuit or combined-cycle gas-fired plants. Their commissioning would be necessitated by the barrage project, but they would probably not be an attractive investment since they would not be able to operate a sufficient number of hours through the year to cover their capital and operating costs.
A ‘low carbon’ renewable would be impracticable without an accompanying carbon-based thermal plant – ridiculous duplication of resources.
My only comment about the environmental implications is to note that the RSPB is adamant that tens of thousands of estuary-based birds would be displaced or starve if the barrage was built.
Paul Spare, Davenham, Cheshire
Limited headroom
I have often wondered whether the two Bulleid 4-DD units could really be described as double-deckers, since they lacked two distinct decks (Letters, PE July).
They did indeed have seats at two heights but, since they had the same floor height as a standard train, this was achieved by a clever but convoluted and cramped arrangement of interlocking lower and upper compartments. As was normal for many commuter trains at the time, they were of non-corridor compartment type: each side door only gave access to one lower/upper compartment pair, so passengers were unable to move along each carriage’s length, let alone between carriages.
The 4-DDs therefore bore virtually no resemblance to any future double-decker trains that we may or may not see on HS2, but they did share a common disadvantage with a higher number of passenger spaces per door than equivalent single-decker stock, plus the effects of internal stairs on passengers’ rate of movement, leading to significantly slower boarding and alighting.
As the HS2 plans envisage 18 trains per hour per direction calling at an intermediate stop (Old Oak Common) with limited numbers of platforms, I would be interested to see how a double-decker train might be designed to meet the required dwell time.
Caspar Lucas, Stourbridge
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