“The Three Pillars” of The Engineering Profession

A successful engineer must possess the eyes of a falcon, the hands of the creator, the insight of the tiger, the wisdom of the crane and the heart of a lion.

Engineers are passionate about creating solutions that foster progress and help people do things that would not be possible without them. Today we would like to tell you about the three pillars on which the engineering profession is based.

“Quality” as a criterion for evaluating the result of an engineer’s work

Albert Einstein once said that imagination is more important than knowledge. If you choose a career in design engineering, you will bring this wonderful theory to life! But there is a related opinion from a no less iconic person: “Knowledge is power,” said Francis Bacon and was certainly right too. So what’s more important? Knowledge or imagination? Neither one nor the other has value if there is no desired result! And the result, as we all know, is characterized by quality. We are not philosophers and not outstanding analysts, but the conclusion is: “It doesn’t matter how much your imagination is developed and how much knowledge you have. If the overall quality of your work is low, then all of the above descriptions do not matter.”

You can paint the solution to a large and complex task on several sheets, do everything quickly and correctly, but if you make a mistake in the last formula, the answer will be incorrect. The result of such work is zero, and sometimes the price of such an error is very high. Designing has many tasks, but one of them is to describe the development object with documents in a form that is accessible to everyone. You can splurge and tell you what a cool engineer or programmer you are, but if your drawing is not possible to read, there are no sizes, the required one is missing cut, and here it’s not even or the code that you wrote is three-kilometer and the software freezes, then nobody as a specialist needs you as a result. And if nobody needs you as a specialist, then who needs you at all?

Of course, it is useful to have a combination of two qualities: imagination and knowledge. This combination will allow you to quickly and accurately achieve the desired and, what is important, high-quality result! But one way or another it all comes down to quality. And in areas such as design and development, quality is a fundamental criterion. You can do it quickly and be the first, but if you do not progress to quality, then you will be diluted and then drowned in the market of any services and goods by other participants.

Specialized engineers who spend all their time developing complex products, machines, equipment and mechanical systems using all the power of creative thinking, technical knowledge and personal qualities throughout their working lives are dependent on the assessment of the end-user! And if the consumer says that the product is of inadequate quality, then the price of an engineer’s mistake is not only the time spent but also the cost of producing a product that they will not buy. And this is already a big responsibility.

“Responsibility” is an engineer’s heavy and lifelong burden!

Surely each of you at least once wondered why the director earns more than a worker? Why an engineer earns more than a concrete worker although they both work 8 hours a day? A concrete worker, on the contrary, has more difficult physical work. Hmm… Maybe because one of them works better than the other? Not! Then, perhaps because one of them studied better? Perhaps, but not this is a fundamental point. Everything is tied to the level of responsibility. The higher the responsibility for the work performed, the higher the salary. Not everyone can take responsibility and risk their reputation, money and even freedom. We can talk with you as much as you like about the unfairness of the distribution of wages among workers but when it comes to specific decisions, not all workers are ready to take risks but only a few. This is the risk that engineers take upon themselves. That is why a responsible approach to business and showing a high-quality result is not an engineer’s choice but a vital necessity!

“Reputation” is an engineer’s calling card

The market for services and goods is mostly crowded and the key to survival is the reputation of the service provider. The situation with consumer goods is more “soft” because the consumer will not thoroughly collect information about the product in the hypermarket but simply choose the one that is more profitably provided on the shelf thanks to the merchandisers. In the market of services, things are much more “aggressive” with respect to the contractor. The consumer realizes the seriousness of the task and very carefully approaches the choice of the contractor studying history, reviews and portfolio. Even one bad word from the customer can put an end to the activities of an engineer. An ordinary producer of products risks a line of goods, while an engineer risks everything!

Conclusion

If you combine all three components, you get a capacious thesis that characterizes the work and overall design engineer.

Thus, we can make an unambiguous conclusion that the work of an industrial designer is associated with risks and requires such an indispensable quality in our realities as stress resistance. It’s not easy to remain calm when, in addition to personal reputation, the reputation of the customer and financial responsibility for errors are at stake. But this criterion determines the best specialists in their field!

Each project and each decision is based on an established philosophy and standard of work: solving problems through the prism of engineering, while at the same time combining design methods and techniques to create elegant and informed results that go beyond simply calculating technically correct answers.

An engineer should strive to provide customers with an experience that gains confidence and makes you return for further cooperation. The basis for such trust is created by honesty and decency – being the most demanded and respected qualities in life and business. We all want to be friends and do business with people we trust. It is honesty and decency that open the doors and are an absolute requirement for success in any business, in any industry.

The mission of the engineer is to accept the needs and vision of the client and translate them into reality, which is constructive, feasible, consistent with his or her budget.