Engineering In Context

This volume aims to provide the reader with a broad cross-section of empirical research being carried out into engineers at work. The chapters provide pointers to other relevant studies over recent decades an important aspect, we believe, because this area has only recently begun to coalesce as a field of study and up to now relevant empirical re

Sir Alan Muir Wood sits in the pantheon of great civil engineers of the twentieth century. In Civil Engineering in Context, Sir Alan Muir Wood draws from his long career to place as he says 'civil engineering in context'. The book contains many personal reminiscences of his life as an engineer from early days as a wartime marine engineer in the Royal Navy, through his more than 25 year career as a Partner and Senior Partner with Halcrow and as a tunnelling engineer of world renown. Civil Engineering in Context also presents Sir Alan's strongly held and sometimes controversial views on how civil engineering as an industry has developed since the pragmatic enterprise of the nineteenth century, through a twentieth century where much of the momentum was lost, and how it should be developing in the twenty-first century. Sir Alan ranges across many topics which directly affect the role of the engineer, including management and the law, systems and design, and ethics and politics. He also discusses his contribution and the wider aspects to some of the major projects of the twentieth century such as the Channel Tunnel. Civil Engineering in Context provides an enlightening insight into the civil engineer and civil engineering through the eyes of one of it most eminent protagonists.

This book describes an approach to engineering education that integrates a comprehensive set of personal, interpersonal, and professional engineering skills with engineering disciplinary knowledge in order to prepare innovative and entrepreneurial engineers. The education of engineers is set in the context of engineering practice, that is, Conceiving, Designing, Implementing, and Operating (CDIO) through the entire lifecycle of engineering processes, products, and systems. The book is both a description of the development and implementation of the CDIO model and a guide to engineering programs worldwide that seek to improve the education of young engineers.

Winner in its first edition of the Best New Undergraduate Textbook by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the American Association of Publishers (AAP), Kosky, et al is the first text offering an introduction to the major engineering fields, and the engineering design process, with an interdisciplinary case study approach. It introduces the fundamental physical, chemical and material bases for all engineering work and presents the engineering design process using examples and hands-on projects. Organized in two parts to cover both the concepts and practice of engineering: Part I, Minds On, introduces the fundamental physical, chemical and material bases for all engineering work while Part II, Hands On, provides opportunity to do design projects An Engineering Ethics Decision Matrix is introduced in Chapter 1 and used throughout the book to pose ethical challenges and explore ethical decision-making in an engineering context Lists of "Top Engineering Achievements" and "Top Engineering Challenges" help put the material in context and show engineering as a vibrant discipline involved in solving societal problems New to this edition: Additional discussions on what engineers do, and the distinctions between engineers, technicians, and managers (Chapter 1) New coverage of Renewable Energy and Environmental Engineering helps emphasize the emerging interest in Sustainable Engineering New discussions of Six Sigma in the Design section, and expanded material on writing technical reports Re-organized and updated chapters in Part I to more closely align with specific engineering disciplines new end of chapter excercises throughout the book

To enhance the nation's economic productivity and improve the quality of life worldwide, engineering education in the United States must anticipate and adapt to the dramatic changes of engineering practice. The Engineer of 2020 urges the engineering profession to recognize what engineers can build for the future through a wide range of leadership roles in industry, government, and academia-not just through technical jobs. Engineering schools should attract the best and brightest students and be open to new teaching and training approaches. With the appropriate education and training, the engineer of the future will be called upon to become a leader not only in business but also in nonprofit and government sectors. The book finds that the next several decades will offer more opportunities for engineers, with exciting possibilities expected from nanotechnology, information technology, and bioengineering. Other engineering applications, such as transgenic food, technologies that affect personal privacy, and nuclear technologies, raise complex social and ethical challenges. Future engineers must be prepared to help the public consider and resolve these dilemmas along with challenges that will arise from new global competition, requiring thoughtful and concerted action if engineering in the United States is to retain its vibrancy and strength.

Engineering represents an ordered activity of creative design andinventive manufacture of ingenious devices. Its practitioners havethereby stimulated individuals, enlivened communities, enrichedcivilizations, and contributed to the shaping of cultures. The authors of this innovative text develop a systematic framework forengineering in time, making extensive use of adaptive heterogeneousprogressions. When combined with considerations of feedback, feedforward, recursion, and branching, an evolving and comprehensivecharacterization of engineering becomes evident. It is in thisblending of chronology, emerging theory, and professional practicethat engineering finds its foundational role in innovative design, device reliability, intellectual property, technology risks, publicsafety, professional ethics, material accounting, and other recurringthemes relevant to contemporary engineering. Engineering clearlyemerges as a complex and increasingly important professio

This second companion volume on engineering studies considers engineering practice including contextual analyses of engineering identity, epistemologies and values. Key overlapping questions examine such issues as an engineering identity, engineering self-understandings enacted in the professional world, distinctive characters of engineering knowledge and how engineering science and engineering design interact in practice. Authors bring with them perspectives from their institutional homes in Europe, North America, Australia\ and Asia. The volume includes 24 contributions by more than 30 authors from engineering, the social sciences and the humanities. Additional issues the chapters scrutinize include prominent norms of engineering, how they interact with the values of efficiency or environmental sustainability. A concluding set of articles considers the meaning of context more generally by asking if engineers create their own contexts or are they created by contexts. Taken as a whole, this collection of original scholarly work is unique in its broad, multidisciplinary consideration of the changing character of engineering practice.