Thank you, Paul, for this and other videos. They inspire and help to lots of engineers. Not necessary construction ones. I see others like me in comments from IT. The general engineering principles are common across wide disciplines. Thanks again!
My mom was an inker, who worked on a light table at home, making the final ink on velum record drawings, for several engineering firms, by tracing from the pencil on paper engineering drawings produced by draftsmen. Luckily she was ready to retire, by the time CADD, and plotters eliminated hand inked drawings.
The whole construction industry needs better people because many smart people went to other industry with less liability and more money such as finance, marketing, IT, management ...etc
This is a wonderrful video. I'm a web applications and data guy who has very much the same thinking about AI that you do. ("Oh, it got that wrong! How interesting. Let's see how we can ask better questions."). There seems to be limitless work to do, just in assessing this technology and finding practical ways that it can be helpful, amid this weird environment of every salesperson in the world now touting the AI in their product (whether it really is or not), and on the other side, all the people complaining about how humanity will be destroyed by our AI overlords. You're exactly right about your customers, so we do have to keep our shoelaces tied at all times, and keep running. In my field of IT, I have been saying the same thing: No, we don't need MORE technologists, but better ones. People who are talented, smart, willing to work hard, and endlessly curious. That curiosity brought me to your channel. Your friend Daniel's story reminds me of my favorite member of the writing team behind the Les Miserables musical, the underrated Herbert Kretzmer, who has the fascinatingly-difficult job of translating the lyrics of the musical from French to English. This not only commands deep fluency in both languages, and the ability to translate both drama and humor, but also the ability to write great song lyrics that move people
we need better colleges and better corporate leaders who value quality over squeezing for max profits at all cost. Engineers can't do well if taught poorly and led around by incompetent leadership.
@@bobmcbobby5211 Many companies now sell stock where shareholders have no voting say. Many smart businesses don't sell stock. Many smart business leaders wouldn't sell enough stock for the stockholders to have a meaningful say. You're proof we need better education.
all the 'better' engineers are going to 'better' paying jobs though. The market dynamics of how structural engineering is a business is not going to draw in 'better' engineers. I have personally seem some of the most gifted engineers get to the top of the ladder to realize their skills would go further in different fields and then leave when they realize they can't buy a house on an engineer's salary Is the future a structural engineer with a dual degree in CS with half the pay if they went to Google instead? On the topic of usage of AI, I think laws need to catch up quickly.
To translate properly, you have to undersrand the ideas and express the same thing in the target language. You generally need the context to be able to translate well. Language does not contain all the information, it is just a textual expression of ideas.
I've been in the energy business for a long time, and have witnessed a decline in the amount of truly talented engineers in the field. The reality is the top kids are going to finance, FAANG, and AI/automation. The pay is higher, the glamor is greater, and there's seductive intellectual challenges. And this is coming at a cost to society. Our best and brightest are being funneled into: finance, to apply their talent to shuffling money around to find arbitrage. To automation, to apply their talent to automating tasks performed by humans, and make existing things cheaper for corporations, rather than better. Or to FAANG, to apply their talent to monetizing people's data. The older among us recognize that we are living through a brain drain, in the form of emigration from intrinsic value-adding fields, to profiteering-oriented ones.
So how can we solve this problem? Argumenting from a free market logic: If you make more money in finance than in building lets say water pipes and canalisations for the city, that should also mean that being a banker is much more valuable for society, since only so few people want/can do the job that you have to pay 200k to hire someone. If you can hire an engineer for 70k for the water pipes, that means the work hes doing is just not worth more , respectively aquiring an engineer with more talent for more money is simply not worth it. Right? This again depends on the whole socioeconomic environment. Lets say a bank pays you 300k to be an investment banker. Meanwhile a poor neighborhood needs new water pipes. They cannot pay you more than 70k since they are a poor Neighborhood and have to finance themselves. From a free market orthodox economists standpoint it is totally fair to say that you will provide more value to society with investment banking than building the water pipes. Free market does not equate freedom. There is only freedom for the wealthy
I just got accepted at one of the best polytechnic in my country, but what makes it different is that civil engineering is actually more of a faculty with 2 different majors I myself major in road and bridge design engineering, but there's also building maintenance and repair engineering. The degree you get is also different from university, while university would get you a bachelors, in polytechnic you would get an applied bachelors, that's because in polytechnic is 70% application and 30% theory, whilst university is more theory than applications. What are your thoughts on that system?
Most people are not delaying their "evolution"; but recognising the very obvious flaws with using emerging technology in all areas to maximise profit. Most models are built on copyright content datasets, such as all books, wikipedia, and many websites additionally. Many companies are not fully acknowledging the flaws in emerging technology.
Technology doesn't care whether you adopt it or avoid it. Technology has its own pace. Your video can't resist it's spread whether you like it or not...😀
I beleive that having a solid hands on or field experince is to have the theory to back it up in order to have a greater understanding. I have been in mining and construction and now owing a demolition business which is allowing me to study more. The start of next year I will be entering my engineering degree. I am putting a lot of faith in myself that my experiences will help me through my studies. I aim to be a great engineer by using my experience and my studies to further my understanding and know matter how much I think I know, I will always suprise myself with what I dont know
Do you think it would be good for engineering students to gain experience on building sites? To see the practical application of what they are studying? There seems to be a split between the people planning the work and the people carrying out the work; is this possibly a drawback?
I spent forty years doing construction engineering, and think all engineers need to spend a few years, as boots on the ground. People were always amazed at my change order rate of 0.02%. But, I worked hard during the planning and design phases, to assure the construction documents were clear and concise, and the project was constructible, and performance based. It was a learning process with every engineer or contractor I dealt with, most of the planning and design types had never been forced to step out of the box, and think about the construction and maintenance phases of a project life. And most construction contractors were used to designers, giving them direction on how to, as opposed to this is what the constructed product has to do.
Very much yes! I spent a year working at a steel fabricator/erector firm in the UK in my mid-20s and that was condensed/accelerated education. All desk and no site makes an engineer a dull dull person!
Thank you for sharing. I really enjoyed it. I have a suggestion: maybe in the future, you could make a video about what knowledge structural engineers should focus on. Should we be learning parametric programming like Grasshopper, or should we devote more time and energy to learning new software in general? If we spend more time learning different software, how do we balance that with reinforcing the basics of structural design? Should we still make time to do hand calculations, or should we just focus on the software? Additionally, we are always under pressure to complete projects faster to stay competitive. This trade-off is something I often think about, and I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on it. Thank you again for sharing!
Zen and the Art of Structural Engineering. You should write it (but read the Motorcycle Maintenance one first, if you haven't). I liked this Paul. I'm an architect, but have always enjoyed working with engineers....which is why I found your channel. Architects are taught appallingly*, so it is great to think that engineers might be being taught intelligently and thoughtfully. *My experience of architectural courses is that they are DIY, and that the tutors are obstacles to you achieving the skills you needs to design buildings.
Eh. Architect here that has great engineering colleagues. Just like any field there's bad, mid, and great. Disagree that they are taught appallingly to work with their client.
I worked on cable structures, but i m curious how do you even begin to use machine learning are there prograns or are you developing your own programs for these types of problems?
The weaving machines famously needed a lot of labour to maintain them. And since the owners followed capitalism, they ended up with children clearing clogs / foreign material, damaging their hearing and very dangerous machine.
The topic of this video is different, but the clarity remains the same. Thanks.
Excelent!!! I am delighted to hear from you. Greetings from Chile, a seismic country that has its own standards for structural design.
Thank you! Cheers!
Thank you, Paul, for this and other videos. They inspire and help to lots of engineers. Not necessary construction ones. I see others like me in comments from IT. The general engineering principles are common across wide disciplines. Thanks again!
My mom was an inker, who worked on a light table at home, making the final ink on velum record drawings, for several engineering firms, by tracing from the pencil on paper engineering drawings produced by draftsmen. Luckily she was ready to retire, by the time CADD, and plotters eliminated hand inked drawings.
The whole construction industry needs better people because many smart people went to other industry with less liability and more money such as finance, marketing, IT, management ...etc
This is a wonderrful video. I'm a web applications and data guy who has very much the same thinking about AI that you do. ("Oh, it got that wrong! How interesting. Let's see how we can ask better questions."). There seems to be limitless work to do, just in assessing this technology and finding practical ways that it can be helpful, amid this weird environment of every salesperson in the world now touting the AI in their product (whether it really is or not), and on the other side, all the people complaining about how humanity will be destroyed by our AI overlords. You're exactly right about your customers, so we do have to keep our shoelaces tied at all times, and keep running.
In my field of IT, I have been saying the same thing: No, we don't need MORE technologists, but better ones. People who are talented, smart, willing to work hard, and endlessly curious. That curiosity brought me to your channel.
Your friend Daniel's story reminds me of my favorite member of the writing team behind the Les Miserables musical, the underrated Herbert Kretzmer, who has the fascinatingly-difficult job of translating the lyrics of the musical from French to English. This not only commands deep fluency in both languages, and the ability to translate both drama and humor, but also the ability to write great song lyrics that move people
super interesting...didn't know the musical story but that makes sense...always parallels across industries/needs etc. cheers!
we need better colleges and better corporate leaders who value quality over squeezing for max profits at all cost. Engineers can't do well if taught poorly and led around by incompetent leadership.
How will that ever change in a capitalist,free market economy? The job of corporate leader is to make more profit for the shareholders.
@@bobmcbobby5211 Many companies now sell stock where shareholders have no voting say. Many smart businesses don't sell stock. Many smart business leaders wouldn't sell enough stock for the stockholders to have a meaningful say.
You're proof we need better education.
you bring a lot of good points to ponder on, how will we develop more value? teach in a way where we are actually "teaching to think"?
all the 'better' engineers are going to 'better' paying jobs though. The market dynamics of how structural engineering is a business is not going to draw in 'better' engineers.
I have personally seem some of the most gifted engineers get to the top of the ladder to realize their skills would go further in different fields and then leave when they realize they can't buy a house on an engineer's salary
Is the future a structural engineer with a dual degree in CS with half the pay if they went to Google instead?
On the topic of usage of AI, I think laws need to catch up quickly.
To translate properly, you have to undersrand the ideas and express the same thing in the target language. You generally need the context to be able to translate well. Language does not contain all the information, it is just a textual expression of ideas.
I've been in the energy business for a long time, and have witnessed a decline in the amount of truly talented engineers in the field. The reality is the top kids are going to finance, FAANG, and AI/automation. The pay is higher, the glamor is greater, and there's seductive intellectual challenges.
And this is coming at a cost to society. Our best and brightest are being funneled into: finance, to apply their talent to shuffling money around to find arbitrage. To automation, to apply their talent to automating tasks performed by humans, and make existing things cheaper for corporations, rather than better. Or to FAANG, to apply their talent to monetizing people's data. The older among us recognize that we are living through a brain drain, in the form of emigration from intrinsic value-adding fields, to profiteering-oriented ones.
So how can we solve this problem? Argumenting from a free market logic: If you make more money in finance than in building lets say water pipes and canalisations for the city, that should also mean that being a banker is much more valuable for society, since only so few people want/can do the job that you have to pay 200k to hire someone. If you can hire an engineer for 70k for the water pipes, that means the work hes doing is just not worth more , respectively aquiring an engineer with more talent for more money is simply not worth it. Right? This again depends on the whole socioeconomic environment. Lets say a bank pays you 300k to be an investment banker. Meanwhile a poor neighborhood needs new water pipes. They cannot pay you more than 70k since they are a poor Neighborhood and have to finance themselves. From a free market orthodox economists standpoint it is totally fair to say that you will provide more value to society with investment banking than building the water pipes. Free market does not equate freedom. There is only freedom for the wealthy
At 10:20 is that karamba 3D FEA the grasshopper plug-in
In some countries we need both. Here in south america we lack manpower either in quantity and quality.
I'm the best civil Engineer from Lagos. Contact me for quality engineering work
I just got accepted at one of the best polytechnic in my country, but what makes it different is that civil engineering is actually more of a faculty with 2 different majors I myself major in road and bridge design engineering, but there's also building maintenance and repair engineering. The degree you get is also different from university, while university would get you a bachelors, in polytechnic you would get an applied bachelors, that's because in polytechnic is 70% application and 30% theory, whilst university is more theory than applications. What are your thoughts on that system?
Most people are not delaying their "evolution"; but recognising the very obvious flaws with using emerging technology in all areas to maximise profit. Most models are built on copyright content datasets, such as all books, wikipedia, and many websites additionally. Many companies are not fully acknowledging the flaws in emerging technology.
Technology doesn't care whether you adopt it or avoid it.
Technology has its own pace.
Your video can't resist it's spread whether you like it or not...😀
A problem with multiple choice testing and learning, is the small amount you can learn in lectures, since they are not engaging
I beleive that having a solid hands on or field experince is to have the theory to back it up in order to have a greater understanding. I have been in mining and construction and now owing a demolition business which is allowing me to study more. The start of next year I will be entering my engineering degree. I am putting a lot of faith in myself that my experiences will help me through my studies. I aim to be a great engineer by using my experience and my studies to further my understanding and know matter how much I think I know, I will always suprise myself with what I dont know
Huge fan here. Could you do some videos directed for teachers? Like explaining the softwares you used to do this video? Would be awesome
Paul's sense of humor 😂😂19:06
thanks!
Paul, are your videos to uni students recorded? I should also like your recommendation on books on structural engineering for beginners.
Do you think it would be good for engineering students to gain experience on building sites? To see the practical application of what they are studying? There seems to be a split between the people planning the work and the people carrying out the work; is this possibly a drawback?
I spent forty years doing construction engineering, and think all engineers need to spend a few years, as boots on the ground. People were always amazed at my change order rate of 0.02%. But, I worked hard during the planning and design phases, to assure the construction documents were clear and concise, and the project was constructible, and performance based. It was a learning process with every engineer or contractor I dealt with, most of the planning and design types had never been forced to step out of the box, and think about the construction and maintenance phases of a project life. And most construction contractors were used to designers, giving them direction on how to, as opposed to this is what the constructed product has to do.
Very much yes! I spent a year working at a steel fabricator/erector firm in the UK in my mid-20s and that was condensed/accelerated education. All desk and no site makes an engineer a dull dull person!
❤18⁹8iuì❤🎉😊¹😅😅
Hello sir, can you make a video on elliptical shape and diamond shape bracing system in Steel structures please 🙏
Thank you for sharing. I really enjoyed it.
I have a suggestion: maybe in the future, you could make a video about what knowledge structural engineers should focus on. Should we be learning parametric programming like Grasshopper, or should we devote more time and energy to learning new software in general? If we spend more time learning different software, how do we balance that with reinforcing the basics of structural design? Should we still make time to do hand calculations, or should we just focus on the software? Additionally, we are always under pressure to complete projects faster to stay competitive. This trade-off is something I often think about, and I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on it.
Thank you again for sharing!
Zen and the Art of Structural Engineering. You should write it (but read the Motorcycle Maintenance one first, if you haven't).
I liked this Paul. I'm an architect, but have always enjoyed working with engineers....which is why I found your channel. Architects are taught appallingly*, so it is great to think that engineers might be being taught intelligently and thoughtfully.
*My experience of architectural courses is that they are DIY, and that the tutors are obstacles to you achieving the skills you needs to design buildings.
Eh. Architect here that has great engineering colleagues. Just like any field there's bad, mid, and great. Disagree that they are taught appallingly to work with their client.
I worked on cable structures, but i m curious how do you even begin to use machine learning are there prograns or are you developing your own programs for these types of problems?
Thanks..
Have you read the novel Hyperion ?
Saying for the bear example - it's not necessary to be the first, it's good not to be the last. Good enough (tm)
Amish for 2024.
More minimalism!
The weaving machines famously needed a lot of labour to maintain them. And since the owners followed capitalism, they ended up with children clearing clogs / foreign material, damaging their hearing and very dangerous machine.