• Question: What is the most valuable piece of advice that you have been given?

    Asked by hannahgrimes to Alex, Chris, Harriet, Jed, Ken on 14 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Ken Gibbs

      Ken Gibbs answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Hi Hannah: An interesting question indeed. The best advice I was ever given was from my father when I was discussing with him whether (or not) I should join the United Nations. I was troubled that the UN was so large that it might not be able to help smaller communities. My father suggested that the best place to change an organisation is from inside, so that I should consider joining to help that change take place. It was excellent advice, and I joined the UN and have been able to make parts of the UN more able to help smaller communities.

    • Photo: Jed Ramsay

      Jed Ramsay answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      When I started work for the Environment Agency over 10 years ago, I started working as a computers guy – building databases and things like that. My boss at the time said she would train me to be an engineer and in 4 years that she thought I could be running my own projects building things. I laughed and thought it was impossible as I knew nothing about construction, rivers, flooding or anything like that.

      Only 2 years later I was running my first project to improve a footpath to get to the river – and 10 years later I’m now a fully qualified and (most of the time) quite a good engineer!

      So I guess it wasn’t quite advice, but my first boss thought I could learn to become an engineer if I tried and she was very right!

    • Photo: Harriet Fletcher

      Harriet Fletcher answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Be yourself, nobody is better qualified. Sounds pretty twee written down but it’s worth bearing in mind. It was relevant to me because I used to pretend to be stupid because I thought boys prefer it, which ended badly.
      On a more practical note, I was told quite early on that engineering is about managing risk. So always understand what the risks of a design are and what the consequences may be, that way you know where to focus your thoughts (and money).

    • Photo: Alexander Zacheshigriva

      Alexander Zacheshigriva answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      If I am thinking of professional advice (i.e. job related) a really good one was from one of our senior engineers. He told me that in real life we often aren’t looking for THE right solution, but a solution that is not wrong. What he meant is that sometimes we can do a very complicated research to find the absolute optimal design, but often this is not worth the effort if a simple solution does a good job. He came up with this when I spend a day doing a complicated calculation of dynamic loads during a block of lead (used to ballast ships) hitting a safety pin at the bottom of the chute that it is loaded through. While he could propose placing a safety pin twice the size and easily proof that it will not fail with a more conservative calculation.

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