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Last week, we finished the first part of the Professional Engineer Summary Statement document, Knowledge and Skill base. Today we take a look at the first element of competency of the second part of the Summary Statement – Engineering Application ability, with our first part on element 2.1: “Application of established engineering methods to complex engineering problem solving.”
While the first section of the Summary Statement concerned the “Knowledge and Skills Base”, the second one is in regards to the “Engineering Application Ability”. This means that applicants will need to match clauses from their three Career Episode documents that describe practical engineering work. As the title of section 2.1 suggests, applicants are expected to highlight the cases where they acted in the context of established engineering methods to solve complex technical problems.
This is a very important competency as problem solving in engineering calls for the utilization of multiple principles, and a wide spectrum of specialized knowledge in practical engineering. This is perfectly reflected by the relatively large number of different indicators that correspond to this element of competency. On this first part, we will analyze and provide examples for the first three indicators of attainment.
a.) Identifies, discerns and characterizes salient issues, determines and analyzes causes and effects, justifies and applies appropriate simplifying assumptions, predicts performance and behavior, synthesizes solution strategies and develops substantiated conclusions.
Example: I investigated the tank overflow problem by conducting chemical analysis of the contained liquid. This revealed water contamination which led my investigation to the water pump that was the source of the problem.
Example: I predicted that the installation of three additional milling machines would require 24% more electric power from the grid. Thus, I proposed the installation of a 200 KiloWatt generator.
Example: I instructed four technicians to take position in different points of the line and measure the output voltage. This way, I was able to find out if the drop was because of the Ferranti effect, or due to a technical problem.
b.) Ensures that all aspects of an engineering activity are soundly based on fundamental principles – by diagnosing, and taking appropriate action with data, calculations, results, proposals, processes, practices and documented information that may be ill-founded, illogical, erroneous, unreliable or unrealistic.
Example: I ensured that the power system was working according to the specifications by comparing the critical operation data with the values indicated by “load to power” tables found in the manufacturer’s manual.
Example: The supplier didn’t have available replacement gears for the product conveyor belts, so I designed an alternative gear arrangement by calculating the required module, teeth number and height, pitch diameter, and pressure angles.
c.) Competently addresses engineering problems involving uncertainty, ambiguity, imprecise information and wide-ranging and sometimes conflicting technical and non-technical factors.
Example: While the specifications of the proposed electric generator indicated that it would cover the plant’s power needs, wherever the same model was implemented there were frequent power outages. I run a power system simulation on ETAP and located reliability issues caused by unequal load flow.
Example: Submerging the temperature sensors in the oil tank resulted in greatly deviating values. As I didn’t have a third sensor to test and determine which one was defective, I put both inside a jar containing hydrogen, and used a spectrometer to find out the correct temperature.
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