Safety and Leadership Relative to Engineers, Infrastructure, and Politics
Publication: Leadership and Management in Engineering
Volume 8, Issue 4
Safety and Leadership Relative to Engineers, Infrastructure, and Politics
A significant part of the discussion of engineers, infrastructure, and politics has to do with assuring the public that the infrastructure is safe. There have been some recent failures, such as levee and bridge failures, that call into question whether engineers can continue to hold the public trust that is necessary to perform as a profession. We need a system that assures the execution of adequate reviews of design, construction, and maintenance functions. We also need a system of reporting information when situations arise in which engineers’ safety-related information is ignored by one’s supervisors and/or clients. For example, recently there were some pictures in the news of deformed gusset plates on the Minnesota bridge that failed in the summer of 2007. Apparently someone during the inspection or maintenance noted the bulging gusset plates and filed the pictures. These pictures were taken several years prior to the bridge failure. Had this information been given the proper consideration, the bridge failure may not have occurred. Currently, there is little an engineer can do about the politics of the situation when their supervisors and/or clients choose to ignore their recommendations about safety-related issues. What we note happening is that a firm or engineer will concentrate on making sure they are covered with a paper trail so they are not legally responsible should some failure happen. This may be a proper legal way to conduct business, but it is not a method to gain the respect and trust of the public, which the engineering profession needs and aspires to have. Obviously, this is not a solution to the problem.
Related and intertwined with the situation just discussed is the significant lack of leadership and political skills in the engineering profession. What we need is the ability for engineers to lead and guide the public and political discussions and decisions related to the planning, funding, design, construction, and maintenance of public works including the infrastructure. Engineers are not adequately prepared to function in this arena. ASCE’s raise the bar effort, which included developing a body of knowledge (BOK) future engineers need that includes an introduction to leadership and political skills, is a good start. However, practicing engineers and academia need to have a significant change of attitude about the importance of these soft engineering skills before we will note much improvement. I would like to briefly discuss some of the reasons for this situation and a few recommendations on how it can be improved.
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Engineers tend to consider themselves problem solvers, letting others define the problems to be solved.
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We need more systematic thinkers, and leaders who can see the total picture.
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Except for a few notable exceptions, engineering educators are not prepared to educate future engineers to be leaders. However, when the employment market for graduate engineers puts as much emphasis on the soft engineering skills (such as communication, management, leadership, and political skills) as it does on the technical skills, academia will prepare the engineering graduates to have these skills. Industry could have a significant input into what occurs in the education process of engineers by requiring graduates to be as competent in the soft engineering skills as they are in the technical engineering skills (this is similar to trying to move an object forward by pushing with a string versus moving the object forward by pulling the string from the other end).
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Currently the engineering employment market does not require young engineers to be leaders. They primarily want engineers that are technically prepared and do not put significant emphasis on the soft engineering skills.
Perhaps discussing a few situations when engineers failed to provide adequate leadership, which in many cases resulted in safety problems for the public, would help explain the situation we find ourselves in. A few are as follows:
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Hurricane Katrina-related news reported that building and infrastructure development occurred where it was easily predictable that flood damage would occur during hurricanes. Also, there were inconsistencies in the criteria and designs for the levees along the Mississippi River, resulting in failed structures. Also mentioned were significant lapses in adequate maintenance of the levee structures. All of these structures had engineering input in the development. Certainly hurricanes are not a rare event in the Gulf Coast area. Where was the engineering leadership in these situations?
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The book The Option of Urbanism discusses the failed model of building cities using urban sprawl as the model. This model subsidizes the cost of the urban sprawl infrastructure by the established city core. In many situations the city core also needs infrastructure rebuilt, but instead the money is used to subsidize the building of urban sprawl—in many cases taking from the poor to support the well-to-do (Leinberger 2008)! Where is the engineering leadership in this situation?
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The book Train Time discusses, among many other things, the advantages of moving freight over rail rather than using trucks over roads. It refers to a Kansas study in which long unit trains are used to haul wheat; then farmers end up using eighteen-wheelers to haul their wheat to the terminal that will load these trains. The result of this change—farmers using eighteen-wheelers rather than the smaller farm-to-market trucks to transport wheat—is that the eighteen-wheeler trucks create major cost damage to the local roads of $7.15 per truck per mile. These truck-damage costs to the local roads increase to $8.08 per truck per mile near the loading facilities. These extra damage costs are not borne by the truckers but by the local taxpayers. Train Time also argues that interstates are being damaged significantly by the load, frequency, and speed of these large trucks, and other taxpayers besides the truckers are bearing these costs (Stilgoe 2007). One would think that those involved in highway design and construction would have a good handle on these various costs. Perhaps we would not have so many damaged and unsafe bridges if the loads were better aligned with the structure designs! Where is the engineering leadership to allow these extra damage costs to occur in these situations?
The engineering professional organizations do not appear to be as well organized to deal with politics as some other organizations. For example, the Associated General Contractors (AGC) is by definition a trade organization as their main purpose is to benefit their members. AGC has a very effective way of working with politicians. The organization makes it their business to have some members get personally acquainted with all government decision makers that affect their members, from local city council members to congressmen. As there is likely an AGC member in most or perhaps all the congressional districts, AGC has an ability to effectively move the political needle when a situation arises that has a common interest to all their members. The American Medical Association is also very politically active and effective. Perhaps we can learn from other professional organizations how to better lead, guide, and impact the political process.
Another situation has occurred that is troubling for the engineering profession. A few years ago the Army Corps of Engineers made some public statements that they were hiring nonengineers to manage and supervise engineers because they were unable to find qualified engineers to manage the workforce. I haven’t seen any published reports on how this experiment has worked out for them. Also there are several state highway departments that have nonengineers as the leaders and managers of those departments. Both of these organizations have engineering as their primary function and it would be beneficial for the manager to have a good understanding of the fundamentals of engineering. If we as engineers have difficulty in managing and leading these kinds of organizations, which are primarily founded in engineering, how do we expect to be able to lead and guide the political process relating to the planning, design, funding, construction, and maintenance of the infrastructure? Maybe there is a correlation between the lack of engineering leadership and management skills, and the sorry state of our infrastructure. It appears we need to significantly upgrade our nontechnical engineering skills.
The aforementioned situations have an impact on the safety of infrastructures. I suggest that ASCE take on the task of providing a system or avenue in which an engineer can report a safety-related problem when the engineer’s supervisor or client will not take proper action to correct that problem. ASCE could then assure that proper action is taken. We need the leadership ability to do this. Ultimately the public is the client of most of our structures. It is the public that will be the judge as to how much respect and trust they will confer on the engineering profession. I suggest we take their input seriously.
The aforementioned items and issues need to be discussed until a reasonable resolution can be obtained. These changing times are creating significant and interesting opportunities for the engineering profession. Let’s prepare ourselves to step up to the challenge.
References
Leinberger, C. B. (2008). The option of urbanism, investing in a new American dream, Island Press, Washington-Covelo—London.
Stilgoe, R. J. (2007). Train time, University of Virginia Press,Charlottesville and London.
Information & Authors
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Published In
Leadership and Management in Engineering
Volume 8 • Issue 4 • October 2008
Pages: 176 - 177
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© 2008 ASCE.
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Published online: Oct 1, 2008
Published in print: Oct 2008
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