Download document:
EEF Innovation Monitor - .PDF file.
Download document:
CBI Economic Forecast - .PDF file.
News editor
Your chance to be a face of engineering on television, the start of a landmark space mission, and signs of improvement in manufacturing are all on this week’s agenda
Last week The Engineer reported on a poll which found eight per cent of teenage respondents looking favourably on a career in manufacturing compared to 26 per cent wanting a career in marketing and media.
A reader comment on this story ended with a plea for, ‘a few TV series showing the ‘problem solving’ nature of engineering, presented by an engineer or scientist with charisma.’
A show similar to the one our reader might like to watch is currently being pulled together and you have an opportunity to be an integral part of it.
Wag TV is in the process of casting a TV show for the Discovery Channel in which the presenters visit hoarders’ garages, disused workshops, and scrapyards in the hunt for scrap parts.
The show, which sounds like a cross between Salvage Hunters and Scrapheap Challenge, will see the dynamic duo will make a decision on whether the found piece of scrap can be restored or modified and sold on for a profit.
Wag TV tell us no qualifications are necessary for the on-screen role ‘just a proven track record and a passion for an engineering challenge.’
Interested parties should contact Natasha Henry at nhenry@wagtv.com by Thursday 29th August.
This Thursday sees Gaia, ESA’s five year space astrometry mission, make its first moves to the European spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana, where it has a launch window of November 17 to December 5, 2013.
The primary mission of Gaia will be to precisely chart the distances, movements, and changes in brightness of our galaxy’s stars. The ‘census of a billion stars’ will do this by monitoring target stars around 100 times over the course of the mission. ESA add that the Astrium-built craft is expected to discover hundreds of thousands of new celestial objects and identify tens of thousands of asteroids.
Gaia will be shipped in two phases: the spacecraft will fly to Cayenne from Toulouse on Thursday evening. Its sunshield will be despatched on August 28, 2013.
A full breakdown on Gaia and its mission can be found here in The Engineer’s July 2013 cover feature.
Early August saw the publication of two reports indicating a relative upsurge in manufacturing.
EEF’s half-year Economic Prospects report stated that manufacturers have upgraded their growth forecasts whilst Markit/CIPS’ Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) signified five consecutive months of expansion.
In the same week the Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported a 0.6 per cent rise in production between the first and second quarter this year and SMMT predicted a rise in new car registrations of 2.216 million units, 8.4 per cent ahead of 2012.
Further tentative signs of recovery have been revealed today by CBI and EEF, with the former revising its GDP growth forecast upwards and the latter indicating that manufacturers are increasing innovation in new products, technology and research.
CBI has raised its GDP growth forecasts for 2013 to 1.2 per cent, an increase of one per cent compared to its May forecast. The business group attributes its revision to an encouraging second quarter and signs of a restoration in confidence in sectors that include manufacturing.
In a statement, John Cridland, CBI director-general, said, ‘The economy has started to gain momentum and confidence is picking up, but it’s still early days.
‘We need to see a full-blown rebalancing of our economy, with stronger business investment and trade before we can call a sustainable recovery. We hope that will begin to emerge next year, as the Eurozone starts growing again.
‘The government needs to get behind talented UK businesses to help them break into new export markets and sell great British products and services around the globe.’
More details can be found here.
Meanwhile, EEF say Britain’s manufacturers are looking expand their presence in emerging markets over the next three years.
Their EEF/NatWest Innovation Monitor found that 71 per cent of the 147 companies surveyed plan innovation to export to new markets in the next three years.
A further 73 per cent said they plan to bring new products to market over the same period, with 75 per cent saying speed to market is advantageous but speed of innovation ‘remains a top concern’.
To meet these goals 66 per cent of companies collaborate with a research institution, half collaborate on research with organisations overseas, and European research funding is identified as proving positive for UK companies.
This momentum will be maintained, say EEF, if the government maintains its positive contribution to growth by announcing a long-term commitment to the Technology Strategy Board and improving access to the new network of Catapult centres.
Steve Radley, EEF director of policy, said, ‘After a long and slow recovery manufacturers are looking to drive growth through innovation, developing new products and services for new markets.
‘However, the demands of selling into new markets have increased the ‘need for speed’ when it comes to innovation, something that remains a key challenge for manufacturers.
‘Encouragingly, government schemes are well-targeted to help manufacturers, but in order to deliver the stability companies need, there must be a longer-term commitment to innovation funding.’
“A reader comment on this story ended with a plea for, ‘a few TV series showing the ‘problem solving’ nature of engineering, presented by an engineer or scientist with charisma.’”
Leading to:
“Wag TV is in the process of casting a TV show for the Discovery Channel in which the presenters visit hoarders’ garages, disused workshops, and scrapyards in the hunt for scrap parts.”
“The show, which sounds like a cross between Salvage Hunters and Scrapheap Challenge, will see the dynamic duo will make a decision on whether the found piece of scrap can be restored or modified and sold on for a profit.”
And so the point has been missed entirely. This is another “look at the clever grease-monkeys” proposition and has almost nothing to do with the socially useful, complex problem solving that is the bread and butter of real engineering. It will do absolutely nothing for the profession.
Hear, hear. Well put Jonathan
If only Discovery and National Geographic were easily accessible channels for non-Sky viewers. BBC could do a lot more. I have seen an increased number of programmes about engineering history on the BBC which is interesting, one recently on Airbus. It would be good to see more and investigate the real issues behind the image and salary problems.
The Biased Broadcasting Corporation, BBC for short, has it’s own biased agenda.
I would like to see a balanced scientific exploration of our energy options with an audience of appropriate scientific and engineering experts questioning BBC ‘experts’ asking questions that are never put and never answered.
For Instance – the CO2 footprint of the concrete base of land based wind turbines and how many years operation to repay the CO2 liberated to manufacture and erect – one report I have heard about says never repay!!!!!
Ask why germany is wind farms and nit tidal flow water turbines – negligible tidal flow on coasts.
Nuclear power options for base load requireiments and providing a hydrogen economy.
creating a UK tidal Flow power generation industry
the German Bimass industry’s insistence on eucalyptus briqquetes at tyhe expnese of destroying land growing the trees – Eucalyptus destroys soil fertility, disrups water sources and causes saoil erosion to the land planted with eucalyptus when other options are better environmentally BUT have a low oil content and higher ignition temperature!!!
A program that informs its TV audience rather than green ‘rantings’ we see of green spokesman and non-greens dismissed as kooks!!
Quite absurd that a journal which apparently seeks to be a voice for our profession could get itself involved in this type of rubbish: shame on you! “The meja! is the message” – a comment from Rupert Murdoch I believe, just about sums up the extent of the cancer which has infected us/you all!
In 1971, on my return to my own country, to bring to it the benefit of my engineering skills, I realised that there was one area -the practices of law as applied to engineering affairs and companies- which had to be exposed, as a first step to its alteration.
I arranged -as an Engineer, well trained and experienced- to do so, in employment, patent, defamation, company and commercial law areas. By simply ‘engineering’ a situation where those likely to be opposed to me and their lawyers would be given the opportunity to demonstrate publicly just what they can and do get up to. And how a well trained technologist could would and should run rings around the ‘bu**ers’. I did. Wait for the books,
Letters ti libel lawyers, Anatomy of an action, Something beginning with ‘L’.
Now, how an apparently lay person can show up so-called learned sham- professionals, time and again: that is a story worth reporting in your and other organs! and the meja as a whole!
My 4 year old daughter has already said she might want to be an engineer. The cause of such an early passion? The marvellous Cbeebies show “Nina & the Neurons go Engineering” – preschool targeted simple explanations of how engineers “solve the problems around us.” We may have already lost the current generation; the next may still be in play.
Bring back Raymond Baxter…great introducer of engineering and its applications. Anyone out there remember him ?
Another hear hear for Jonathan.
Engineers use brain power to solve practical problems not fiddle about in sheds. Leave the history out of it and look forward.
As the author of the request for ‘a few TV series showing the ‘problem solving’ nature of engineering, presented by an engineer or scientist with charisma.’ May I suggest to Adrian (above), that many an engineer has started out by acquiring an understanding of the physical world, and an interest in ‘how it works’ by the very process whereby they “fiddle about in sheds” (or taking there toys apart to see how they work, etc.).
That’s what an enquiring mind drives you to do – seek knowledge and (hopefully) apply it.
It’s vital that we encourage our youngsters to get stuck in and get messy. Too many children these days are told to ‘keep clean’ and ‘not to mess about with things they don’t understand’. All too often, it’s the parents that have no understanding, and are therefore unable to quantify the risk; so they go far the ‘safe’ option and steer the children away. And so another child lost.
We need a TV series that reaches children AND their parents & teachers, most of whom have no understanding of physics, chemistry or engineering.
“Engineers use brain power to solve practical problems not fiddle around in sheds……”
Thanks for the plaudit Adrian but I have to slightly disagree! My shed has always been exceptionally active and has spawned two companies so far. I think it takes both, however, they are applied simultaneously in the process of original problem solving and there are plenty of examples from history that make this point.
What is needed is properly constructed, intelligent, documentary television showing the development of new products and the human story and drama behind it. This should also cover the delights of funding and building a business case. This point is really important, often an engineer can see that something is vital for the economy/national wellbeing etc but the business case cannot be made. It takes sheer bloody mindedness to push ahead under these circumstances. Sometimes it works out (flight, the jet engine, Dysons vacuum cleaner), sometimes it doesn’t (Trevithicks high pressure steam locomotive, great progress but ahead of its time. Supersonic flight, wrecked by spineless government in the UK but ahead of its time, ultimately killed by the 1970’s fuel crisis but may come back….).
The common element is the chinese puzzle of problems to solve to get anything genuinely innovative to work, the human story of creative engineering married to effective business development, the uselessness of university research (slight bias there…. apologies for that), the string of dead ends on the route to success, the mixing of business types with engineers (this can be hilarious), I could go on for pages…. Sounds like drama to me.
I should probably add a short story to my above post.
One of the most difficult things for an engineer is to get an idea beyond the stage of padding out the back of a filing cabinet. This is whrwe a lot of the dram resides.
In my own case, I invented a fast sailing boat for the fun of it. This thing flies at a worrying multiple of wind speed and I built a few models. A friend did a presentation on this at Weymouth speed week. A member of th audience liked it and got in touch, turned out he had a business and reckomed he could fund it (purely for fun so far, yes, I did it in my shed). Business issues killed the project ( money) but as my partner in this also liked ideas we had been mucking around with something else that I had dreamt up a few years ago.
A video of one of the models plus some sailing press coverage got the attention of a City hedge fund director who thought he might be able to get a heavy weight backer. He didn’t manage to do this as the extremely radical nature of the boat scared most people away. He also got wind of the “something else”, however and did some business modelling. Cutting this short we now employ about 30 people, have serious funding and are pushing towards a fully functional demonstrator. The story will be far from over when we reach this point.
Isn’t this the stuff of drama? This story is not particularly unusual, all accounts of innovation are full of human as well as technical drama. The end point is usually not predictable from the form of the beginning. I am sure that Dyson would be able to offer an even more convoluted story and if we look at virtually any pioneer of flight the stories become incredible.
The real problem is that the (generally) arts graduates who run media concerns have almost zero knowledge of what engineering is while alomost all the engineers that I know are well educated in the arts. This takes us back to the root of the problem which was the late 19th century separation of arts from sciences. The biggest mistake the UK ever made.
If we ask todays teenagers to fiddle around in sheds, they think only of the person with a spanner and oily rag doing something mechanical.
I agree sheds can be wonderful places, but we risk turning off all those who want to design a product by insisting they do renovations first.
Practicality can be added on once the spark of actually solving an problem is sown in their minds. It’s easy for an engineer to teach a youngster how to cut, drill, solder and assemble; but if you don’t excite their imagination , then they won’t ever start.
To achieve anything new one has to tinker at the edges of the existing.
Such behavior is frowned on by Accountants and Commercial Directors as not obviously adding to the bottom line.
Our Victorian ancestors – both capitalists and technologists- had the right idea about clerks: they were kept in the counting house, on one-legged stools, so that if they fell asleep with the shear boredom of what they were doing -count the numbers AFTER the work had been done- they would fall over. Some silly Bu**er let them out of the counting house and they got into the board room, where they have been exercising power well above their proper station in life!, and interfering with matters they have no business to do! ever since.
Put them back I say!
It sounds entertaining but I hope the name of the programme does NOT include the word engineer or engineering.
Perhaps the following are more appropriate:
– The restoration mechanics.
– The rebuild crew.
You would not call a skilled builder an architect, so why would you call a skilled mechanic an engineer.