The Old School

There is no doubt that the progress of human beings in the latest years towards more optimized technologies, sophisticated softwares and artificial intelligence has been amazing. All these in general aiming to improve productivity, the quality of life on Earth planet but also protecting the environment where we live. There is one concern that deserves our attention, the fact that nowadays some engineering professionals learn the “how to use it” but no what’s behind it. This in some cases might be a problem leading to design mistakes when participating in project developments.

Some of us may consider ourselves lucky just because we had the opportunity to live the engineering transition, meaning when we moved from the hand made design calculations and drawings to the computer assisted ones. For most of us it was wonderful and continues being. Designing today in fact is much more productive and able to generate more optimized results. I still remember piping flexibility analysis, hydraulic calculations, plant, elevation, isometric piping drawings, even project planning, all hand made. It is a wonderful memory but I am absolutely towards technology and innovation, like most of you. 

I am lucky because in a reasonable measure I knew what’s behind it, in my field of course. However not everyone, specially younger engineers, could live what we did but indeed may have the way to learn from it… Never be satisfied if you do not understand the result, no matter how good it seems.