We need an online presence in structural engineering

Hiding behind insurances and intellectual property has its place, but there's more value in sharing.

Photo of the Coronado Bridge by Abraham Barrera on Unsplash

You all know the feeling. You encounter a problem you’re not too familiar with, so you jump onto your favourite search engine and investigate. There are two further issues you’re likely to run into.

1. There’s almost no information on the web about your engineering issue; and

2. What little information there is is in the form of journal articles which: a) tend to be written very densely and poorly, and b) are behind a paywall.

You’re left scratching your head. The internet has been of no help at all to you. But you’re a resourceful engineer and you’re usually able to solve the problem through a combination of asking questions of your co-workers and/or rationalising through first principles¹.

Where are all the Super-Ts?

A brief example of this is Super-T bridges. For those in the bridge space in Australia, you’ve no doubt been involved with at least one of these bridges. They’re far and away the most popular bridge type of the last 20 years. Cheap, efficient and robust engineering at its finest. Yet what do you get when you do a search for “Super-T girders”? A few links to the transport body in NSW standard drawings (which are definitely useful, mind) and a design guide from the transport body in QLD². That’s it.

What if you had a more specific query on Super-Ts. Say, “prestress loss in Super-T girders”. There’s not much here, but a few links seem promising to answer our question. When we click through we realise they are tutorials for driving the software packages MIDAS and Autodesk Structural Bridge Design. Again, useful if we want to learn how to operate the software, but not so good for our understanding of the underlying physics.

This is all to say that I think there’s a gap here. It would be incredibly useful to everyone if there was more online discussion of engineering issues. We’re all busy with work and home lives, but so are other professions, and they seem to engage online much more. Specifically I’m thinking of the programming community. I’m self-taught in Python and R through reading forums and blog posts on the internet. No courses, no books, no instruction from a teacher. I’m confident anyone could learn almost any programming language in this way.

But to learn engineering this way? No chance. Perhaps some of the basic analysis and design principles, but anything more involved requires combing through a textbook ($$) or journal article ($).

Now I hear what you’re saying.

• There’s a reason we engineers don’t publish information and tools online - it’s the intellectual property of the company I work for.

• Engineering isn’t like computer programming - if you get bridge design concept wrong people can be seriously injured or massive financial damage can occur.

(If I’ve missed anything, let me know in the comments.)

It’s good for you to be active online

I absolutely agree with those above points, but don’t think they are deal breakers for publishing engineering content online.

1. Creating content - whether it’s a short article, a lengthy essay, a video or answering a forum question - further cements your own knowledge of the subject.

   Yes, this can be a little daunting, putting yourself out there for all the engineering community to judge and rip into (I’ve seen some of the comments on the Engineers Australia social media pages…), but honestly, who cares about someone judging. You’re learning, and simultaneously helping others learn. That makes you a better engineer.

2. You make other engineers better.

   This might sound like a con at first, since there are only so many jobs available on the market and engineering ability is an important factor in the talent pool. I’m a firm believer though, that if you make others better, they’ll in turn make you better. It also creates a collaborative attitude, which is incredibly helpful on multi-disciplinary projects - we’ve all been there.

3. You become a highly sought-after engineer.

   Not only will you create online connections in the industry with people you don’t work directly with (growing your reputation), you’ll also have a portfolio of work online to point to and say “Hey, see all that great stuff I did?”. This is a common problem for engineers. We go for a new job, but can’t bring any of our past work with us because it’s mainly in the form of drawings which are intellectual property. On top of that, you show that your communication skills are fantastic and you have the interest, ability and experience in educating other engineers.

It’s also good for the industry when you’re active online

It’s not only you who benefits. While that may be the prime motivator for action, it also helps the industry by making engineering more accessible for students and young engineers. If we go outside the realm of our day-to-day jobs, content targeted towards school kids helps inspire them to get into the industry, plus it works on your communication skills and explaining concepts in simple ways to a non-technical audience.

Ask for permission first

There are some things that I’d say you really should get permission before discussing first.

• Project-specific details

  This is 100% the case if you have signed a confidentiality agreement for the project, and likely the case for all projects.

• Any drawings or other deliverables

  I can’t think of many scenarios where you’d want to be sharing a drawing set from a project. A detail? Sure, you can use that detail in isolation and discuss it without needing to mention the details of the project or wider scope of the job.

Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness

Engineering companies (particularly the larger ones) are very risk averse. While this might be somewhat controversial, I think there are some things you shouldn’t bother asking permission - your company will probably say no if you ask, but have no issue if you do it anyway.

• Publish any generic content (articles, videos, podcasts, etc.)

  As long as it isn’t project-specific and is done on your own time (d’uh), then most companies won’t have a problem with this.

• Ask and answer questions on r/StructuralEngineering, StackExchange, Eng-Tips or other forums

  Again, as long as you’re not going into detail on projects or any confidential items (and doing it in your own time - the answers, that is) then this is fine.

• Tools you’ve developed to perform certain tasks

  These might be spreadsheets, bits of programming script or even a design checklist. If you’ve developed them independently in your own time, I’d say go for it.³ If someone has asked you to prepare it and/or if it was done on company time, I’d ask for permission first.

A brief note on open-source

I’m not sure how much engineering work can be truly open-source. Almost all of our activities are larger scale, involving huge sums of money and numbers of people. There are many different commercial and even political interests that need to be balanced for each project. While the idea of creating open-source tools to solve structural engineering problems is sexy, I’m not too sure it’s even needed. Yes, there’s still more research being done into some topics (shear, I’m looking at you), we’re fairly confident about most of the elements we design. As a result, for consulting engineers like me, we’re in “delivery” mode, churning out designs for real-life projects to get built (hopefully). There doesn’t seem to be a lot of scope for open-source. Couple that with the fact that any useful piece of software developed has a huge commercial opportunity, so where’s the incentive to open-source?

Where to

This is the first article on this blog, and after writing it I realise it serves as a kind of manifesto. What I’ve discussed above is exactly what I want to do here. I can promise that most of the articles will not be philosophical ramblings about engineering, but hard-nosed discussions and explanations of structural engineering problems.

The people who are likely going to want to read these pages are practising structural engineers or high level university students. I’m writing more of an article-style piece of content, but that doesn’t mean you have to. You could create a video channel with the basics of physics, targeted towards 4-6 year olds. You could create a podcast on bridge engineering and discuss different design problems with special guests. There’s so much potential out there, and the internet is one big megaphone.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. If the above sounds like it’s up your alley, you can subscribe to this newsletter, for free, at the link below.

1. Or as a last resort, posting on Eng-Tips.

2. Which is a great document, but actually deals more with detailing than engineering design principles.

3. You might of course, want to further develop this into a paid tool which you sell at some point.