<![CDATA[STORMWATER SHOPPE - Blog]]>Sat, 07 Jan 2023 10:23:30 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[The Anonymous Engineer]]>Mon, 22 Jun 2020 19:57:10 GMThttps://www.swmshoppe.com/blog/the-anonymous-engineer​Civil engineers can at times be difficult to work with. A necessity to have on a team, but not something you seek out and get excited about. Where does this difficulty come from? Why does working with engineers have to feel insufferable sometimes? I think part of it stems from the fact that civil engineers are aware that our role is not glamorous. We don't typically design things that capture people's imagination or inspire awe. Certainly there are some great feats of engineering that are well known and timeless and awe inspiring, but at a project level the bulk of our work is spent trying to go unnoticed.

​Whether our efforts are literally out of eye sight because they're buried or so expected and plain that there would be no reason to take note, people tend to only have an opinion about our work when there is a problem and thus opinions are greatly skewed in a negative way. This is a fact that most civil engineers have come to understand. However, I don't think anyone really comes to accept a fact that their very best efforts will necessarily go unnoticed. That doesn't feel good to anyone.
At times I think we compensate by over-valuing our role. We can't help but to search for our own satisfaction. We overstate our importance in meetings because subconsciously we crave recognition, but it can have the negative effect of seeming arrogant, smug, or intellectually elite, when in reality a civil engineer is a wonderful and smart person just like every other team member. Combine this with a gravitation towards social awkwardness (there, I said it) and it can make engineers downright unpleasant to deal with.

Another negative that can derive from this need to self-satisfy is that an engineer can lose sight of what matters to the client when they're subconsciously searching for something to make themselves feel valued. An engineer may overthink something. Over design it. Search for the BEST design when a good design will do perfectly well. We may get focused on some minute detail and miss other more relevant ones because we think this thing is particularly cool and we need to insert that value or coolness because it doesn't come from the outside. We might find satisfaction in the relaxing nature of a round number like 1.0% instead of 0.973% and work hard to tweak the design until we get there instead of just rounding it up and moving on. If we really accept that our goal is a design that simply has no problems there should be no reason to push the design further than achieving that goal. Some other engineer might appreciate the effort, but for everyone else, including the client, it just looks like unnecessary time and money. We'll have taken a job with little recognized value and devalued it even more.
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I think there is a solution to this problem of feeling undervalued and then subconsciously lashing out or sabotaging a project. We need to redefine what our purpose is and what success is. We need to find a purpose that can be outwardly appreciated by others and that will allow us to let go of feeling like our plans or reports are paramount. If we look to service as our goal we can stop worrying about designing the BEST plan and instead focus on the best plan for YOU. And those efforts will not be unnoticed or forgotten by those you serve. When we define our job by our service we won't feel a need to jockey for position on teams or care a lick if our product is treated like a commodity. 

]]><![CDATA[What's the Problem]]>Mon, 22 Jun 2020 19:55:15 GMThttps://www.swmshoppe.com/blog/whats-the-problemEngineers can be... engineery. We pride ourselves on being "problem solvers" at our core, but we often view the world through a certain specific lens. A typical engineer's lens might be their particular field of study and practice (Disclaimer, this article does not mean I advocate for engineers practicing outside of their area of expertise!). At face value this is perfectly reasonable. But as the saying goes, if you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. As long as we assign only nails to people with hammers there is no conflict.
The world is not so simple however and often a problem that is at the core of an engineer's duty is not rooted in their tried and true area of expertise. Maybe it's a software problem. Maybe it's a problem with work flow in the office. As engineers our chest of tools has to include more than our hammer. A good engineer enjoys approaching each challenge as a problem in need of solving in its own right. I've seen good engineers use their analytical minds and methods to break down a vast array of problems and provide clever, elegant solutions. This trait gives us much of our value in our respective industries.

However, there seems to be a blind spot even for very good engineers. Even if one broadens their self-image say from Water Resources Engineer to Civil Engineer to just plain ol' Engineer, we're still stuck in a single dimension. We see engineering solutions to all of the world's problems. This singular approach especially breaks down with people problems. All too often engineers provide engineering solutions to people problems. It's like using a hammer on sadness. When the root of a problem is a people problem, we have to broaden our "Engineer" self-image even further to "Person". The reality of our industry is that most of the problems ARE people problems. Engineering is the easy part. It's clients, coworkers, competitors, team members, reviewers, bosses, subordinates, and everyone else we interact with each and every day that are critical to success and all of these individuals are people and they've all got problems. Spreadsheets are useless against them. Formulas are powerless. Standards are pointless. Spreadsheets are... actually, there's got to be a way for a spreadsheet to help. Right? Please? If we fail to recognize this, then our best engineering efforts are utterly wasted.
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Not every engineer is programmed to be good at solving people problems and that's ok. It's a good start if we can begin to recognize what the real problem is so that we can either rise to the new challenge or know when to call in reinforcements.
]]><![CDATA[The Irrational Engineer]]>Mon, 22 Jun 2020 19:51:09 GMThttps://www.swmshoppe.com/blog/the-irrational-engineerIt sounds like an oxymoron, but what if the best qualities in an engineer are the least rational?
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Some time ago a passing comment was made about computers taking our engineering jobs. A comment that is not unique to engineering by any stretch of the imagination, but I took my turn at contemplating it. If I may lower myself briefly to mock the classic engineer stereotype he, yes he, is a nerdy, anti-social, white, bespectacled, balding, middle-aged man who talks more like a computer than a human. I admittedly check all of these boxes except for my age, but with a little luck I expect I'll get there too. It is no secret however that this is not the only or best version of an engineer. We know that most of those stereotypical qualities are completely unrelated to the profession. We know your race, gender, age, and hairline have nothing to do with your engineering abilities. But what about the other qualities.
By our nature and our profession is it more important to be quick with numbers than quick with conversation? We know that communication is important for engineers, but this seems more anecdotal than practiced. We still expect our engineers to more often sound like computers than humans and on some level that gives us comfort and credibility since we're preforming an analytical and technical task. Eyes roll when an engineer feels compelled to explain something in their know-it-all tone that misses the point and goes over one’s head. One may think, "I don't need to know this. Just tell me how it affects me."
I used to resent this or at least feel defensive and argue that all this complicated stuff IS how this affects you. There isn't a simple answer or else it wouldn't be a complex and technical job. This was my baseline world view before I thought about the question of computers taking my job. If I see myself as a glorified computer, pleased with my computing power and logic, then yes, one day a computer certainly will take my job. But the idea of losing my job to a computer didn't feel right. On some level I know that a computer can't replace me because... I'm human!

So I asked myself, what makes me human? What makes me useful in a way that a computer is not? And slowly but surely I realized that all this time the qualities in myself that I scorned - my emotions, my irrational thoughts, even my errors, are maybe the very things that are good and important about me and about any engineer. It's my human side that can be inspired. It's my human side that understands my human client and their needs and the humans that make the rules I have to follow and the humans who are impacted by my decisions. It's my human side that engages with my colleagues and wants to learn from them and teach them and grow with them. It's my human side that cares about all of these people so that my decisions reflect my humanity as much or more than my logic. It's my human side that can interpret data in a NEW way.  It's my human side that makes mistakes, but it is also my human side that can recognize them.

We've all cursed our computers because it didn't give us the answer we wanted and it did something "stupid". The computer can only draw one conclusion from the information you give it. Us humans can step outside of pure logic and make connections and have insights and attach meaning in ways that I hope computers never can.

So now, when I think about what a good engineer is, I'm looking for humanity rather than computing power. Let our technology do the rational work it's so good at so we're free to be the best irrational engineers we can be. The best people we can be.
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