Is there an “Engineering Method”?

“Engineers do a super job, no matter where we place them.” A recruiter from a financial services company told me that. I had wondered aloud why he was recruiting my students at a job fair as well as those majoring in finance. He then quoted the Dean of Harvard business school as saying that engineers were so valuable because they solved problems methodically. Hmm.

Engineers have been in the employment cat-bird seat for decades, with consistent demand and rising salaries. My graduate students got multiple job offers before they finished their degrees and often agonized over which attractive offer to accept. What’s the secret? Is there a “method” that gives engineers an edge over other disciplines?

“The Engineering Method” is defined in several online sources, often as a sequence of steps that parallel “The Scientific Method,” but they miss the essence of real-life engineering as I know it. Engineering doesn’t exactly fit a step-wise method. There are too many If-Then branches. It’s more of a mind-set.

Professor Billy V. Koen wrote an insightful treatise (Definition of the Engineering Method. American Society for Engineering Education, Washington, D.C. 1985) that defines the engineering method as: “… the use of heuristics to cause the best change in a poorly understood situation within the available resources.” That’s pretty good but not very clear. It also requires his additional definition, “A heuristic is anything that provides a plausible aid or direction in the solution of a problem but is, in the final analysis, unjustified, incapable of justification, and fallible.” He then provides a list of heuristics. Double Hmm.

One of Koen’s heuristics is, “Always give an answer.” That’s certainly a key element in engineering. Scientists can protest that a question can’t be answered without more information but engineers seldom have that option. Engineers account for missing information by making assumptions and then applying safety factors or uncertainty bounds to account for the assumptions.

I distill from Koen’s book and my experience these thoughts (heuristics?) about the engineer’s mind-set:

·       A clearly stated objective is fundamental.

·       There are constraints on what constitutes a successful objective achievement.

·       The objective must be achieved.

·       The solution is informed by state-of-the-art science, mathematics, and technology.

·       Large, complex situations can be broken into manageable, solvable chunks.

·       The solution doesn’t have to be the absolute “best.” It should be a good solution that fits the objective and constraints given available resources.

I’m still not sure this adequately captures the engineer’s mind-set, much less fits the definition of a “method.” 

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