It's risky to miscommunicate risk

In a previous post, I asked that we take caution how we communicate a certain risk. That example talked about the location of the "Valley Fault System," previously called the Marikina Fault, which obviously presents a certain disaster risk. One problem was that risk wasn't quantified then -- how close should one be to the fault lines to be at risk? It wasn't very clear, but people could readily assume that if they are clearly not along the fault lines, they should be safe. If they're not sure, they should consult PHIVOLCS (not PHILVOLCS, by the way), who can provide information on distance of a certain property from the nearest fault line.

Not the smartest thing I've heard from a relatively very senior structural engineer... [UPDATED]

Talking to a group of wind engineers, a structural engineer with years of experience in structural design said:

"Can't you people reduce the wind loads? The columns on core walls in our 400-meter tall or higher buildings are 1.5 meters thick wide. These are too big."*

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: experience does not equal expertise.

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* Note: This is not a verbatim quote.

Why projects always get delayed and engineers always have to do overtime work

Image hosted on Quora.com

In addition to clients usually wanting projects done yesterday, this is quite a nice, realistic list that we would all need to realistically deal with eventually in our lives as civil engineers:

http://adf.ly/7LYsj

It is of course seemingly talking about software development, but you can just exchange "developer" with "engineer" and "code" with "design" and it immediately becomes applicable to most engineering professions, civil engineering included.

Engineering Companies

I've been with a few. And I've seen the two sides of the coin. I hope we won't be doing it wrong in the 21st century. After all, we are already past the industrial age. Something to remember for engineering consulting firms, old and new. Watch this talk by Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation, a video on TED.com: