DESIGN : DEAR PLUMBERS 17
Covid , the engineer and engineering
By
D . S ( Vollie ) Brink Pr . Eng . MSAICE , MPMISA
Covid has affected our lives and our work and everybody all over the world and so in turn it has also affected the engineer and engineering .
Many consulting engineers have closed their offices and the engineers have instead worked from home .
Zoom meetings have become the order of the day with some offices just having a few “ hot seats ” in the office .
Some offices are converted into apartments and some with apartments with a home office for one or two people .
Many years ago , I read in a journal that “ the office ” will disappear and some banks closed their offices and gave their workers a laptop and a motorcar , to work from a home office .
I believe this is the future for engineers .
There is presently much pressure to deliver work on time and at cost and this must be a high priority .
It is important to “ work smarter and not harder .”
The “ Works Information Document ” ( WIDOC ) which I developed for my office , was designed to save time and cost and therefore was a great effort to “ work smarter .” This document contains , from standard specifications to standard details , and is a legal document and it saves time and saves cost .
We must share this knowledge and find more ways to develop “ smart ways of working ”. This is part of the “ Fourth Industrial Revolution ” and the future of engineering .
Vollie Brink is one of the industry ’ s longest-serving wet services engineers . He continues to serve on SABS committees and has been involved in the Green Building Council ’ s Green Star rating system . Brink continues to consult for various organisations while enjoying a wellearned retirement .
Some companies have drastically reduced their office space and they provide a few “ hot spaces ” in this reduced office space .
The “ hot spaces ” are provided for staff who must come into the office to use the facilities such as printing drawings and eye-to-eye meetings for a limited time .
Some of the work of the engineer can be done in an office but a large part is out of the office on project site meetings and inspections with the contractors such as the plumbers and clients etc .
This part of the accommodation is very easy to apply , but the actual engineering and design part is not so easy and can cause great stress for the workers working offsite .
Communication between the home office and the on-site office and the management can be a problem if the necessary facilities are not provided to have good communication between these bodies .
A very important element of these off-site working stations is that the staff must be reliable and able to work on their own , which is a requirement of a professional engineer .
However , good contact and feedback is extremely important . This type of working must be very well programmed with regular feedback and reporting to keep the management fully in the picture .
The workload must perhaps be reorganised so that the engineer does engineering work and not work which can be done by a more economic person but this person must be competent to do such work under the supervision of a manager .
In the past , the engineer was responsible for the design philosophy and then the rest was done by a competent technician .
This was before the time of the professional technologist and professional technician who can now do more than in the past .
It is important to note that the work to be done by the engineer , technologist , and technician is supposed to be selected to suit their qualification , registration , and responsibility .
This new trend to work from home will perhaps have to take note of these differences in terms of their workload related to qualifications , competencies , registration , and responsibilities .
That change has and is taking place and is real but the question is - what can we do smarter ? PA
Kind regards
D . S . Brink
Pr . Eng .
“ The workload must perhaps be reorganised …”
November 2022 Volume 28 I Number 9 www . plumbingafrica . co . za