Structural engineers are unsung heroes | Hacker News Reader

Structural engineers are unsung heroes

theguardian.com

117 pointsfern1252 comments

I don't understand people who aren't fascinated by engineering generally and infrastructure specifically. I love knowing how stuff works, even if I don't understand it at the technical level an engineer does.

So much of what we use we take for granted, but it really is worth seeing what goes into making potable water come out of your tap. In middle school, I toured the Baldwin water plant in Cleveland, OH. There is a huge hall full of sand filters that filter out the schmutz after the water is chemically treated. It's one thing to know abstractly that drinking water is filtered through sand to make it drinkable. It's another to see the process in action on a grand scale.

In Boston, I highly recommend seeing the Chestnut Hill pumping station, which pumped water from the Chestnut Hill reservoir. It long predates the availability of sufficiently powerful electric motors, and the three steam engines are a testament to how much work went into pumping water around prior to the development of electric pumps.

I believe the last of the steam engines was decommissioned in the early '70s. I'm told the pumping capacity has been replaced by electric pumps in a single 3m square building, which somehow doesn't convey the same sense of awe and indebtedness to the engineers who make running water possible.

Gotta share a longtime favorite joke:

What's the difference between civil (structural) engineers and mechanical engineers?

Mechanical engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.

One of the best general Engineering books I've read is 'Design Paradigms'. It's an excellent book about the importance of understanding failures in Engineering. The author is Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University, so all the examples are roads/bridges/etc.

As a Data/SWE guy, I still enjoyed reading it a lot.

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Paradigms-Histories-Judgment-E...

Thank for the recommendation! If you're into that sort of thing, you might also enjoy Why Buildings Stand Up and Why Buildings Fall Down.

Why Buildings Fall Down includes a case study on a seemingly minor change during construction that caused a walkway to collapse once it was put in use.

At the risk of stating the obvious, these are focused on buildings rather than roads :-)

Ooh, that reminds me of another excellent book on failure, Sidney Dekker's "Field Guide to Understanding Human Error": https://www.amazon.com/dp/1472439058

It's about investigating airplane crashes, and in particular two different paradigms for understanding failure. It deeply changed how I think and talk about software bugs, and especially how I do retrospectives. I strongly recommend it.

And the article made me think of Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn": https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140139966

It changed my view of a building from a static thing to a dynamic system, changing over time.

The BBC later turned it into a 6-part series, which I haven't seen, but which the author put up on YouTube, starting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0

I especially like that in the comments he writes: "Anybody is welcome to use anything from this series in any way they like. Please don’t bug me with requests for permission. Hack away. Do credit the BBC, who put considerable time and talent into the project."

That first episode should be required viewing (repeatedly!) by all architects, physical or software. Geeze.

Here's a book that's given many software practitioners inspiration:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeless_Way_of_Building

I would suggest - as basic readings for those that are not structural engineers or however working in the field or familiar with it - these two (by now "classics") by Mario Salvadori:

Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture

Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail

Appreciate the recommendation. I haven't read much on this topic, but the two I've liked so far:

Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down by J.E. Gordon https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/245344.Structures

Science and the City https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28260428-science-and-the...

All of Henry Petroski's books are good. A couple that I'm particularly fond of are The Pencil and The Book on the Bookcase.

This is true. While dealing with building architects on many occasions during my internship, they would say silly things like, 'Can you not just avoid this girder/beam/pillar?'

My boss would coldly say 'Do you mind removing brake pedals from your car to make it prettier'?

I hope as you progress through your career you learn to be more respectful of diverse ideas. I'm a software engineer, I have to have discussions with designers and business people who also sometimes ask for things that just aren't reasonably doable given time and budget constraints. It's our job as professionals to explain this using a tone and words that educates others on what the technical constraints are.

I know what your saying about tone. But a retort like that in the building trades is pretty gentle.

> I hope as you progress through your career you learn to be more respectful of diverse ideas. I'm a software engineer, I have to have discussions with designers and business people who also sometimes ask for things that just aren't reasonably doable given time and budget constraints. It's our job as professionals to explain this using a tone and words that educates others on what the technical constraints are.

Funny. I inferred the tone as having levity. One, or both, of us is projecting.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/02/different-worlds/

Architects have a bit of a rep for being prima donnas :-)

I left structural engineering long ago for Software engineering.

The trick is that architects are often also just commissioned for the project. You work together to make a nice-looking, structurally sound, and not all too expensive design.

I think it is a nice remark :-). Sometimes the design has to make a little concession, sometimes the construction. The best engineers are those that think along and try to find solutions, the best architects have some understanding of what is possible. And often 'everything is possible, it is just going to cost a lot'.

I'm generally interested in the history of architecture of this small part of the world where I currently live (a country in Eastern Europe) and as such I remember reading an architect's memoir about how in the 1940s his architect teacher used to be run off with stones or worse by engineers and construction workers when said older architect would approach a construction site with "new design ideas".

It's much less funny when one knows that one such "star architect" back from that time (George Matei Cantacuzino for those interested, here's his wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Matei_Cantacuzino) was in charge of designing the Carlton building in downtown Bucharest. Only 4 years had passed since the building had been finalized when it collapsed as a result of the November 1940 earthquake. Cantacuzino himself had an apartment in that building but fortunately for him he was out the evening when the earthquake happened so he escaped. He risked prison-time after the whole ordeal, but then we got into war with the Soviets (not such a bright idea) and nothing came out of it. Here's the wiki page for that Carlton building: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocul_Carlton (it's in Romanian, but it has photos with the building itself and the earthquake's aftermath).

Point is I'm sure that the architects can very well handle a small joke as long as they're aware that people's lives depend on their work.

you arent an engineer. engineers have to be licensed and are liable if their work fails.

This comment is right on point. In building construction, the structural engineer is typically the architect's client. The challenge is always to seek the compromise that promotes your partner's agenda, without compromising the structural integrity.

What awesome TTS system are you using that can reconstruct tone from text transcripts?

Often they are very sung, like Louis Kahn's collaborator August Kommendant. And a superstar like Cecil Balmond specifically deals with problems exactly like the one you mention—where an architect wants a column-free span in an unconventional space.

Can't say I am thrilled by the book under review. I've seen it in bookshops and it's far from offering a critical account of engineering. More like someone quite innocent and enthusiastic who has drunk the kool-aid of the macho, Cartesian, ethically oblivious engineering tradition. Rowan Moore's faint praise is appropriate.

That's not silly. There correct response is "well, what's your budget?" The reply may be a number that's an order of magnitude too small, but then you have a negotiating point to work with, or at least an understandable (and not condescending) answer.

Yup. Saying "do you want me to remove the brake pedals from your car?" is basically saying "I'm lazy and want to build cookie cutter things and move on to the next paying job"

No it's not. You can remove brake pedal from your car but then you'd need to construct an expensive custom deceleration system. It's an apt analogy.

"Although it might seem a sane and reasonable business, the world’s great engineers, she believes, were "very eccentric characters, all very tenacious, the sort who were cheeky at school and didn’t do what their parents wanted them to do"."

That's all very nicely put, to fit a lot of people into that mould don't you think? Very 'horoscopic'.

Everyone is disagreeable & eccentric to some extent when they were young, including the world's great engineers/theorists.

There's more to this equation, add parameter of hard work, a bit of obsession (or 'passion', whatever that is...), a bit of environmental 'push', and THEN perhaps that might yield a 'great' individual who does that one thing very well.

In other news, 100% of known engineers is human.

A much more interesting piece of information would be how many people have those characteristics, but do _not_ turn out to be great engineers.

Structural engineers have one of the most stressful jobs as well. Work is incredibly precise with deadly consequences under tight deadlines with a lot of egos in the way. Massive respect to those who thrive in this profession.

> Structural engineers > stressful

Pun intended?

Coming from the profession, I often think that the problem is quite the opposite -- that there're too many engineers with an outsized ego. In almost every way, aside from schooling, the structural engineer's trade is no different than any other construction trade, and has a contribution -- framed in financial terms, or in terms of common good -- on the scale of that of a (qualified) tradesman.

"the structural engineer's trade is no different than any other construction trade"

Can you name these? Because that statement is false if interpreted literally.

I've personally worked at different times as a carpenter (residential projects) and structural engineer (long-span bridges, tall buildings). I mean it quite literally.

Literally in the sense that calculus is literally college-algebra and trigonometry?

> the structural engineer's trade is no different than any other construction trade, and has a contribution -- framed in financial terms, or in terms of common good -- on the scale of that of a (qualified) tradesman.

Not sure how to read that or how you meant it, but a good or bad engineer can have a big financial effect on a project in a way that a tradesman couldn't.

A construction project is overdetermined to a degree that few other enterprises are. In terms of compensation, an hour of a practicing structural engineer (aside from Calatrava & co.) is worth about as much as a carpenter's (who's paid his dues, so at about the same level of investment as engineer's into his profession). In terms of know-how or sweat equity or risk minimization, it's near impossible to say who, if anyone, contributes disproportinately more than others.

Are you talking about the on site engineers supervising the project build (kinda menial work), or the up front design engineers working with the architects?

For the former yeah I can kinda see where your coming from, but for the latter there is huge scope to affect how the project turns out financially in a way that a carpenter or supervising engineer just doesn't have.

A structural engineer in the US, at a minimum, requires a Professional Engineer license. The licensing requirements are similar elsewhere in North America, and in Britain. In some states (such as California), to practice structural engineering requires a Structural Engineer license. So anytime I mentioned structural engineering in this thread, it goes without saying...

I see no mention of Florida anywhere

The article is from February.

i dont understand why people who write code consider themselves engineers. they arent liable if their code breaks. they have no professional licensing system. they dont even need an education.

There are those of us who write code who are licensed engineers. In certain jurisdictions you just be, and are liable, if the code you write has an impact on public safety.

Since many engineers aren’t licensed will they also have to stop referring to themselves as engineers?

In some places, yes. Ontario, for example, imposes hefty fines on individuals who use the an engineering title without accreditation.

There's a lot of debate about what kind of activity software development is. The camp that doesn't see it as engineering argues that programming is a craft, or that code is "grown".

I think one of the key differentiators for engineering is that something engineered should work by design after it has been built (not including regular maintenance of a machine). A defect requires a special process to repair all built instances.

In software development, defects are a regular occurrence requiring continuing changes, and requirements change as well. Of course, that's very different from a bridge or a combustion engine for example.

Automated testing can help push software development _toward_ an engineering mindset.

BTW - you're right that most software devs don't need licensing or formal education, but it comes off as pejorative. While those could help set standards, some of the most talented people I've worked with have neither (and some of my class mates in college don't affirm a benefit for formal training).

In software development you are solving new problems continually. If you weren't you could just call a library function with some parameters and be done with it.

Structural engineering is much like calling library functions with certain parameters and then making sure it all works and is safe. You know how what you are constructing differs from existing buildings and use that to decide what to do. You don't (usually) invent new ways of building things or building things that are unlike anything that was built before.Therefore such projects are well-known engineering practice, and your skill and knowledge of those practices can be tested and you can be licensed.

Some software development is like that too but most is not, you are creating new designs all the time because your software is for new purposes, not to replace something existing with perhaps a slightly improved version. It's hard to license anybody in "inventing new things".

Would it be too presumptuous to assume you have less structural engineering experience than you do with software?

You seem to be forgetting that vast majority of software development is churning out the same old buggy barely maintainable CRUD apps in dull enterprise environments or for tight fisted agency clients.

Precisely. I would have been less charitable in my response. Most software development is plumbing. To say we're solving new problems all the time and then to set that in some unclear opposition to what structural engineers do... I mean, just like software, each SE's project is different and yet similar across cases. That's uninformative, to say that least. So if you want to contrast them, it's best to actually know what you're talking. Also, I always hated occupational narcissism. It's a sign of narrow-mindedness.

(Besides, the question about whether software development is engineering or craft is very much real. John Allen, John McCarthy, Bertrand Meyer and Peter Denning have all written interesting things about this subject.)

Try being responsible for the monthly billing runs when (on your first £1 Million month) when the CTO nudges you and says this had better be right or we are both out of a job :-)

This actually happened to me back when I worked for Telecom Gold

Unrelated? Licensing and liability have nothing to do with interest and fascination, which is what the post you responded to was about.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16611821 and marked it off-topic.

The article is dated in February.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com