Love an engineer

Sleep well? Alarm wake you as planned? Fresh food in the fridge? Tea and coffee to hand and the kettle working? Hot water for a shower? I don’t need to go on, if you live in the developed world the answer to all the above is almost certainly, ‘Yes’ – and that’s down to engineers.

If you’re thinking engineers don’t make beds or grow coffee, think a bit more. Beds, and bedding, and just about every other item of furniture and furnishings are made by machine; engineers designed and built the machines. More engineers keep them running. When they become obsolete engineers will replace them and recycle the materials. The same applies to food production, from field to fridge involves hundreds of machines. That’s not the end either, once you’ve finished with your food and extracted as much nutrition from it as your body is able, the remains will be processed by more machinery.

Engineering makes some countries desirable places to live in, and others good places to get out of. Engineers build infrastructure, provide consumer goods and the energy to run them. As energy supplies dwindle and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions gets through the skulls of even the densest politicians and financiers, it will be engineers that literally re-engineer our housing, transport systems and energy provision.

Strange then that in the countries that rely most on engineering, there are shortages of qualified engineers and admissions to engineering courses at both apprentice and undergraduate level are in decline. We already rely on the far east to provide manufactured goods, soon we will be importing Chinese and Indian engineers to keep the lights on, the gas flowing and our waterworks working.

Or maybe we could stop worshipping people who move virtual money around and heap some well-deserved praise on those that make things work.

Phil Thane is a journalist and technical writer. Visit his web site at pthane.co.uk