I’ve been thinking about my 18+ year career lately – right back to the time I graduated (maybe because I turned 40 a few weeks ago!) and I realised something looking back…
Engineering is:
more than the 3D CAD model.
more than a pressure plot from CFD analysis.
more than the interim solutions, part failures and team squabbles.
It’s really a discovery of your ideas, your team dynamics, the development environment, exploration of relevant and current knowledge, the tools used that enhance and support the decisions, the mathematical calculations / rigor and ultimate hope we have in finding a working, robust solution to the problem at hand. You take from a physicist, material scientist, mathematician and raw materials to form the idea into physical reality.
–Nasser Mushtaq
I remember when I was a graduating from University with a Degree in Mechanical Engineering back in 2008, how naive my ideas of industry were.
And no, Academia didn’t prepare me for the industry – how an Engineering business works, the departmental / operational dependencies nor the workflows you need in place to get the most out of the tools.
Maybe that’s why I found myself gravitating towards the processes and workflows we tend to follow, over the last few years of consulting.
Since Engineering is full of software tools, it’s the obvious place to improve and create more workflow-focused tools that can actually improve the development experience and end-products you create as an Engineering business.
In the 9+ companies I was contracting and consulting at in the UK, I noticed flaws in communication, the systems around me and the workflows the team defaulted to.
“I was only an “Engineer” though – what did I know about the business of Engineering?” Or so I thought…
But then, I was an “outsider” to some degree – an external consultant / contractor, not part of the salaried payroll.
This allowed me to step back, mingle with different departments more freely and ask some of the bigger questions.
At the end of the day, the goal is to create a solution to solve the problem.
We should always be asking ourselves two questions:
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How good is this solution?
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Can we deliver better products with all that we have?
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Do the development tools we use support us in the decisions we need to make?
If you’re an Engineer building products, commit to better communication.
If you own an Engineering business, commit to better workflows and processes.
If you’re human, have empathy for the user – that’s who you’re really building for.
After 13+ years working as a Senior Mechanical Engineer, I now improve and build the Engineering software tools (CAD, CAE) with the insights I had sitting in the design seat.
I enjoy sharing the frameworks that changed everything for me and have a mission to make processes and tools more conducive to the challenge of making decisions as an Engineer.
See you soon. 👋
Nasser
Title image from DHCAE tools
