Saturday, January 17, 2009 -

Ok guys (Ladies and Gentlemen), this is the first reading assignment for EG1471, so feel free to comment on the essay that I had written below.

In the article, "The expanding world of engineers" by Professor Seeram Ramakrishna, stated that the role of Engineers had been expanding rapidly over the years. Engineers are not just limited to the manufacturing industries alone. They also played a crucial role in other industries as well such as the finance and service sector. Today,engineers are the dominant players in the Singapore economy and no doubt the driving force for the future. It is very common for many people to think that engineers just build things and have very little prospects. However, since I am in the Engineering trade, I can confidently state that the prospects of an engineers are limitless. What makes engineers so important in the Singapore thee way that they are trained to think.

Building and constructing things are part of the many roles an engineer and it is incorrect to view Engineers as builders. Engineers have to learn to design an item or system as well and this provides him with skills that are useful, even outside of his trade. For example, if we are task to design a device, we look at several important factors. First, is how are we going to make the device work and look at the amount of available resources we have. Secondly, the situation is always changing and we have to think carefully for the best design for the system. For example, if we are to design an electrical device and found out that in the latter stages we have a lack of crucial materials in constructing the device or supposedly discovered serious flaws in the system, we will have to find an alternative mean to the problem. Some of these alternative solution would have to be thought fast in order to meet the dateline. This is when the Engineer developed their skills. Skills such as analysing the problems and thinking of the best alternative solutions as quickly as possible, has proven to be useful in many sector, one of the many reasons why banks are hiring more and more Engineers despite their trade. From my personal experience with assignments and projects, problems always happen and I received very little assistance from my tutors. Many would probably see this matter as a dead end,however, one should not see it in that manner. Without much assistance, I was forced to find the solution myself, either through books or the internet, and this had proven to work extremely well for me, as it forced me to be less dependent and enables me to find other problems much efficiently. Through this form of education, I had developed skills which over my academic years, found to be extremely useful even beyond the scope of my training such as managing a CCA club and working in other jobs, not as an engineer.

Similarly, we can see that this approach is extremely reliable not just in Engineering world but the finance world and many other sectors as well, one of the many reasons why engineers are welcome in many other industries outside of their trade. Engineers think in a more practical and specific approach and not imagined ideas. This differentiated an Engineer from a Scientist. Scientist usually thinks in a more theoretical manner and would conduct or set up a complex system, which in some cases, is practically impossible. An engineer would take a more systematic approach and set up a much simpler system that is able to work in the real work. Not to humiliate the Scientist role in the industries, scientist and engineers will always need to work together in order to create an effective system, as Engineers will need scientific theories develop by the scientist, in order to get started on the drawing boards. And there is a common saying, from my lecturer in polytechnic, that the Scientist role is to think of an idea, while the engineer makes the idea work.

The Tertiary education in Singapore has provided many future engineers with skills not just knowledge. These skills have limitless potential and will no doubt spearhead the future economy. In the globalised economy the ability to change will determine its success. This lies entirely in the hands of the engineer's analytical and designing skills, are all too important in meeting these challenges. The engineering course, whom in the past, was described as a dying breed, now begin to see new light as skills are much harder to attain then knowledge itself.

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Saturday, January 17, 2009