Something for the Engineers to think about...

Original Publish Date: April 10, 2008

Something to chew on for all the engineers out there...

Was having an interesting talk with my supervisor several nights ago.We were discussing the pointlessness of going to engineering school, as there was a very good chance that the neighboorhood postman would end up making more money than us. He suggested that in order to increase our marketability, we should introduce yet another course for students to take, 'Engineering Marketing 101', as it might help us sell ourselves. Didn't really think much of the comment at the time…

Yesterday morning I was happily killing time, reading through the news, and came across the following link:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1728893,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

It seems as if US water infrastructure is in serious need of repair, and billions of dollars need to be invested to bring the system back up to standard. Is the government willing to spend this money though? I sincerely doubt it… after all, there are still buildings in Iraq which need to be bombed, and that money for explosives has to come from somewhere, doesn't it?

But getting back to my original point, in North America, despite deteriorating infrastructure, we are generally lucky enough to be able to turn on the tap, and get clean water. But just how bad is it, in the rest of the world? The numbers are quite shocking:

Turns out 2.2 million people will die this year due to lack of access to clean drinking water. To put this in context, the number of people expected to die this year worldwide due to AIDS is estimated to be 1.9-2.4 million people. It seems as if lack of clean water is AS BIG a killer as AIDS. Yet, how is it that so many people know of the AIDS epidemic, and so few know the severity of this water crisis? There are plenty of 'AIDS walkathons', 'charity drives', and 'benefit concerts', but I have yet to hear of a 'Water walkathon'…

Is it possible that my supervisor was right? Do we need to start taking courses in marketing? Do Engineers need to start taking more pride in what they do, and start selling themselves, and more importantly, their services, to the public better? We have the 'cure' for dirty water, and yet, we do not advertise it well enough. Is it not frustrating then that while billions of dollars are invested in R&D for diseases, we don't invest money in implementing the 'cure' for unsanitary water worldwide? Ultimately who is at fault for not making sure that our services are actually put into practice?

The fact is that without electrical engineers, doctors would not have access to the biomedical devices with which they are able to perform their miracles. Without civil engineers, you probably wouldn't get any water pouring out of the tap when you turn the handle. Without mechanical engineers, we would not have the engines which run just about anything that moves. It's clear that engineers have power. But as Spiderman would say, "With great power comes great responsibility".

The question is, where does our responsibility end? Does it end with simply designing a system/component, or do we also have a responsibility to the public to see that our services are being properly implemented? Forget about marketing ourselves better in order to increase our chargeout rates... Do we need to 'market' ourselves better in order to see that our knowledge and expertise are being properly implemented?