Guest blog by Peter M Hills DipEE MSc CEng MIET

Peter Hills, IET Archives’ guest blogger, has written a second piece offering some sage advice to those not only in the engineering world but to everyone in all walks of life. No doubt these aphorisms have been tried and tested by Peter over his long career in engineering. Here are some he thought most pertinent to share.

A celebration of long membership

In 2018, Nick Winser, the then IET President, wrote to me with an award for over 50 years’ continuous membership of the IEE and then the IET. He said,

“… your career in engineering has spanned five decades of considerable change in technology and society.”

Indeed so. I have seen astonishing progress and learnt so much during a taxing but hugely enjoyable engineering career. So here are my maxims for successful projects – most of which have a story to tell.

The short & pithy ones:

If it looks right, it probably is right.

If it works, don’t fix it.

Cheapest is rarely the lowest cost.

Fastest is often the slowest.

Buy cheap and pay twice.

Measure twice and cut once lest you measure once and cut twice.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Some well-known ones:

Occam’s Razor: Pare away unnecessary complexity. The simplest solution is the best solution. The simplest solution is the most reliable solution. JohnJoe McFadden’s book ‘Life is Simple: How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free And Unlocked the Universe’ published in Sept. 2021 is a worthwhile read.

If it can happen it will, at some point, happen. Otherwise known as Murphy’s Law. One of the oldest but still the best book on this topic is ‘Murphy’s Law’ by Arthur Bloch.

At the end of the day, when all practical investigations have been completed, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, the probability is that it is a duck.

Good counsel:

If you don’t look forward to every working day you are with the wrong employer or in the wrong profession.

Thoroughly understand each task in hand and be aware of the consequences of failure.

Don’t remove something just because you can’t see why it was in there. You will find out eventually why it was in there.

Chase down the fleeting things, the one-off things, the not quite perfect things lest they come back to haunt you. And they will.

Designers never know best. Evaluate the design with the team that has to build it, test it and most important of all, maintain it.

Never ever say, “I assumed…”

Never assume someone will or has done it. Never assume it worked that way. They won’t have and it didn’t.

Never say, “I didn’t know…” or “I didn’t realise …”. You should have.

Never put off to tomorrow what can be done today.

It’s better to say I don’t know but will find out, rather than I know and be found out.

Don’t be afraid to ask for advice.

If things go pear-shaped, own up; don’t cover up.

Pay attention to the detail.  One of Einstein’s sayings was “A man who ignores the small things can never be trusted on the big things”.

The bits you don’t checkout will be the bits that fall out.

Doctors’ mistakes generally kill in ones. Engineers’ mistakes kill in scores, hundreds, thousands….

In critical systems, never do it with ones when threes will suffice.

Never trust fully any simulator or simulation or mathematical model. The model will be wrong or will have excluded real-world events. (Re: London’s Millennium Bridge 2000).

All engineers need to understand the concepts of stresses, dynamics, transients, resonance and stability.

Fix the problem, not the symptoms. (Re: Boeing 737 Max crashes).

Write it up today because you will have forgotten it tomorrow.

Back it up tonight because it won’t be there in the morning.

For high-security IT projects adopt an air-gap backup policy.

Ask every day:  Is there a better way?

High quality can add costs to a business. Poor quality will break a business.

In everyday speech and in technical discussions don’t use words you cannot define.

You learn more by things going wrong than you ever learn by things going right.

Maxims for the workplace:

Giving presentations –

Know your stuff inside out.

Keep it short. Keep it simple. Make it pretty. Make it powerful.

Never read aloud from a prepared script unless it’s a press release or you are a politician.

Leading teams –

A definition of management:  Planning, Organisation, Direction and Control.

In multi-disciplinary teams ensure you know enough to be dangerous.

Don’t lie, exaggerate or bluff.

Look colleagues and visitors straight in the eye.

Listen to your team members. Communication is everything.

Be friendly but not their friend.

Treat all colleagues with respect whatever their roles or status.

Be generous with praise.

Praise in public, reprimand in private.

Strive to end dismissals on good terms.

Meetings –

Follow the Amazon–Bezos rule: No meeting should be so large that two pizzas can’t feed the whole group.

Never adopt an aggressive attitude.

Never lose your rag.

Never sit with arms folded.

Never sit with legs or ankles crossed or touch a cheek.

Learn to control your facial expressions.

When interviewing, make the candidate do the talking.

And finally, if you said you would do it, make sure you do it.

About the Author

In 1969 Peter Hills graduated from Surrey University with an MSc degree in computing and control engineering, having first taken the IEE Part III examinations for the DipEE qualification.

He became a Chartered Engineer in 1975. He worked for Sperry Gyroscope, later British Aerospace, in Bracknell and played a leading role in three major projects for the Royal Navy. Those projects all involved the Sperry 1412 computer, for which he was one of a five-strong ‘skunk works’ development team.

Peter stayed in military systems and software engineering for fifteen years – at which point he set up Pacts Auction Systems and in so doing switched from military to business systems and software development. Over the next 30 years, Pacts became the pre-eminent supplier of back-office technology for regional auction houses. It was supplied to more than 200 auction venues and processed over £300 million of auction sales each year.

Peter retired when Pacts was acquired by Bidpath Corporation in 2016. He remains a member of the IET having first joined as an Associate Member of the IEE in 1966. 

Image: Woman assembling plug-in printed circuit board, part of a 2400 bits/second modem, STC data systems group, Enfield, 1968, IET Archives NAEST 211/02/41/02/9804.2