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  • How small change gave birth to the modern world

    We complain about it, but our towns and cities would become impassable without this engineering achievement... July 16, 1935 - The world's first parking meter is installed Another hot, dry summer day in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA. On the corner of First Street and Robinson Avenue, workers are setting up strange contraptions on the sidewalk's edge. When people try to park their cars on the road next to the new devices, they have a surprise. Now, they have to pay for every minute they want to leave their vehicles in the street, up to an hour. The bane of the modern urban motorist is here: the world's first parking meter. The birth of a modern problem In the first 20 years of the 20th Century, towns and cities in the United States were filling up with motor cars, for which there was…

  • The Whole System: Rail - Key points on Systems Engineering and Rail

    Rail transport is already a complex system, pivotal to integrating our transport network into a larger system engineering whole What is rail transport? Urban and inter-urban rail is a high-speed solution for the transport of people and goods. While roads are mainly focused on individual transport solutions, rail is mass transit with similarities to air and sea transportation; it is organised as a network, centred on major hubs. The rail network connects interchange points (for example, passenger stations or freight terminals) and other transport modes. Rail Systems Engineering (SE) is inherently a “system of systems.” Why does rail matter? Railways connect goods and people through mass transit operational models. In the year to March 2022, UK railways accommodated 990 million passenger…

  • The Whole System: Aerospace - The magic of flight

    It could be said Systems Engineering and Aviation were made for each other The invention of heavier-than-air flight has made the world smaller, easier to reach, particularly after 1950. As aircraft capability has grown, the machines themselves have become, as we shall see, vastly more complex. The aerospace sector manufactures products that can be used in a variety of different contexts: Civil aerospace sector using aircraft and helicopters to transport passengers and goods Defence Aerospace sector extending from Civil Aerospace use case to include military applications (weapons and defence uses) Commercial Aerospace where aircraft and helicopters act as couriers In addition to these products, multiple related infrastructures, subsystems, and personnel provide key support for…

  • The Whole System: Maritime Transport - Dangerous cargoes – Systems Engineering can make it safer

    Systems Engineering can make for safer seas Marine transportation has always been a popular choice when moving hazardous goods around the world. Carrying very large inventories in a controlled setting, with access to centralised on-loading and off-loading facilities, connected to geographically distant locations - all present advantages rail and road are unable to achieve. This brings numerous challenges in, for example, managing interfaces with other transportation methods, for example, road, pipelines, and rail. Safety doesn’t come last Waste similar to this is transported by sea for disposal in third countries. Domestic appliances being recycled, SW London Source: John Cameron on Unsplash Implementing a safe, secure, and efficient transportation system network is key to achieving…

  • The Whole System: Maritime Transport - Finding the harbour in the tempest

    Ship navigation and Systems Engineering can be an excellent fit Backbone of the world economy Maritime transport has supported world commerce for centuries. Now it is the backbone of world trade, making up around 80% of the volume of international trade in goods. Key to this is ship navigation, the process of ensuring a ship gets to where it is going without becoming another statistic in a featureless ocean. In the last decade, global shipping, and the movement of goods by sea have seen substantial changes in the number of ships and their size. The average capacity of container ships has grown from less than 3,000 to circa 4,500 Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) in the last decade. More than fifty mega-ships in the world have a capacity of 21,000 TEUs. Navigation is a journey, not a…

  • The Whole System - Road Transport: What we think about when we think about transport

    As important as transport is to people, it is also vital to freight and manufacturers Freight is a good place to begin any discussion of the significance of Systems Engineering within the transport industry. It is something the general public give little or no thought to, unless goods are delayed en route and items such as food, drugs and parcel deliveries are not delivered on time. It (freight) refers to the movement of raw materials, fuel (non-pipeline) and merchandise. It is typically intermodal, including as it does multiple interfaces with other transport operators. Efficient freight transportation is essential for productive manufacturing & distribution and contributes to sustainability through integration with green energy sources. Ticapampa District, Peru Source: Ernesto…

  • The Whole System - Road Transport: An Integrated System Awaits Us, If We Knew It

    What is blocking an integrated road transport system? On the face of it, Transport would appear to be an excellent example of a large-scale engineering system, rather than a collection of disparate technologies that move people and goods from A to B. The plain fact is that this is not true, not entirely. For while cars run on roads, there is little actual integration to make it a true system (other than through the driver). To begin with, Systems Engineering (SE) principles are not applied to this wider road transport system of systems, which includes the vehicles, road infrastructure and communications networks to connect them in the future. Indeed, there is no one single organisation or authority that has this system and data integration as a core goal. It is difficult to see how the…

  • The Whole System: Systems Engineering in Transport - Introduction

    How can Systems Engineering help foster an improved transport system in the UK? This blog series will examine how transport systems use Systems Engineering and how Systems Engineering will be essential for their future success. ‘The Whole System’ is a series (or a system, if you will) of blog posts covering Systems Engineering (SE) in transport. It will provide a snapshot of how SE works within the wide range of transport modes we now take for granted. Systems Engineering defined These definitions provided by the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) are a good guide to what the discipline entails: A system is an arrangement of parts or elements that together exhibit behaviour or meaning that the individual constituents do not. An engineered system is a system designed…

  • Harnessing the Elements: A Career in Wind and Solar Energy

    For the next in our 'My Engineering Career' series we hear from EngX community member Aditya Vyas MIET , an engineer working in the Renewable Energy industry. Aditya shares why he became an engineer and the importance of continuous progress: Who I am and what I do I work as an engineer. The last nine years of my working life have been devoted to the renewable energy industry. More recently I have spent the last six months working as a Senior Renewable Energy Consultant in the area of hybrid power. The role revolves around delivering Advisory and Owner's Engineering Services for standalone and co-located utility scale energy storage and on hybrid renewable power plants. The business work on projects with both in-front and behind-the-meter systems. My primary responsibilities include overseeing…

  • Where it all began...raising water by fire

    Paradoxical as it may have seemed to society 300 years ago, water and fire could be joined and made productive. It just needed the right spark… July 2, 1698 - Thomas Savery patents the first ‘steam engine’ It is 1698. The Industrial Revolution is still decades away. Muscles, be they human or animal, are the main sources of power to get most things done. Take tin and coal mines, for example. They are prone to flooding and the only way to remove the excess water is by a horse powered pulley system that raises the water in buckets. Thomas Savery Source: Wikimedia Commons What if this could be done by something akin to magic, but that is not magic? Gentleman, military engineer and inventor Thomas Savery has just the thing. The ‘thing’ is what Mr Savery has patented today, July 2 nd…

  • The Women of  the EAW Manchester Branch 1926-1935

    By Isabella Fletcher and Graeme Gooday, University of Leeds This is the sixth of a series of blogs written by Liberal Arts students at the University of Leeds to celebrate the centenary of the Electrical Association for Women in 2024. These blogs on early EAW activities are based on themes that the students selected from reading digitised versions of the first two volumes (1926-1935) of The Electrical Age (for Women). You can read Isabella’s first blog here . Introduction The Manchester District Branch of the Electrical Association for Women (EAW), launched on the 25th of March 1926, was the fifth such to be founded . Staffed by some of the most ardent pioneers for the domestic uptake of electricity, Manchester’s was soon one of the most active EAW branches. Although the women we discuss…

  • Sparks of Success: Charting a career course in electrical engineering

    We meet Danny Bratcher TMIET in the next of our 'My Engineering Career' blog series. Danny is a Senior High Voltage Electrical Engineer working at a large international airport in the UK. Danny tells us about how he was encouraged into a career in engineering and the value of Mentors: Good to meet you, let me tell you about myself Greetings and thank you for taking the time to read my blog detailing my career so far as an electrical engineer. My name is Danny Bratcher. Currently, I am the Senior High Voltage Electrical Engineer working for a large international airport in the UK. I started my career as an Electrical Engineer in 1992 when, out of over 80 candidates, I was successful in obtaining a 5-year electrical installation apprenticeship with a small electrical contractor based in…

  • Harmonizing Humanity and Machines: Insights from ICRA2024

    In May the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) was hosted in Yokohama, Japan. The conference was nothing short of remarkable, drawing thousands of robotics enthusiasts, researchers, and industry leaders from around the globe. The theme this year being how robots and people can work together better. The conference’s live demonstrations were a highlight. Hundreds of robots competing in representative scenarios, highlighting their capabilities to the best of their abilities. From agile drones to humanoid machines, we witnessed real-world applications in action. These demonstrations underscored the power of robotics to transform industries, from manufacturing to disaster response. It was not clear how many end users were present, but there was certainly a massive…

  • Unlocking the Power of Predictive Maintenance - Part 1: The Promise and Challenges of Predictive Maintenance

    Imagine a world where assets tell you exactly when they need maintenance, preventing costly breakdowns and downtime. This is the promise of Predictive Maintenance powered by Artificial Intelligence. In the ever evolving engineering world, integrating new and exciting technologies, Predictive Maintenance has been labelled a game changer for businesses aiming to optimise their maintenance practices. However, the challenges of actually implementing Predictive Maintenance often go unspoken. This blog series will dive deep into these challenges, exploring what Predictive Maintenance actually is, the hurdles to overcome with the data, and how to evaluate the outcomes. Traditional Asset Maintenance Within engineering industries, asset maintenance typically follows one of two approaches: Reactive…

  • Exploring advertising techniques in volume two of The Electrical Age

    Guest blog by Emily Raynor, University of Leeds This is the fifth of a series of blogs written by Liberal Arts students at the University of Leeds to celebrate the centenary of the Electrical Association for Women in 2024. This project has been supported by Professor Graeme Gooday. These blogs on early EAW activities are based on themes that the students selected from reading digitised versions of the first two volumes (1926-1935) of The Electrical Age (for Women). You can read Emily’s first blog here . Introduction The Electrical Association for Women published a quarterly journal from 1926 named The Electrical Age (until 1932 called The Electrical Age for Women ), which informed readers about electrical developments in domestic technology, along with reports about the Association’s…

  • IET Education Resources recognised at awards ceremony!

    The IET Education resources team were honoured to take home the Educational Resources Award (Secondary) from the Education Business Awards held in London on Wednesday 12 June. The award, recognising an organisation providing educational resources, products or services which support teaching and increase pupil engagement in the secondary schools sector, had some tough competition with organisations including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Amnesty International, Royal Geographical Society and the European Space Agency all shortlisted. Holly Margerison-Smith and I were very proud to be at the event representing IET Education where, in front of nearly 200 people, the nominees for each category were announced by presenter Ashley John-Baptiste a BBC broadcast journalist and presenter. The…

  • Mustang Sally…

    On this day in (engineering) history… June 18, 1983 - Space Shuttle program: STS-7, Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space. Women have been in space before, so it isn’t as though they can’t live with the stresses it puts on mind and body. Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1982), from the USSR, have both been there and done that. Now. Saturday, June 18, 1983, Sally Ride will become the first US woman to do the same. Dr Sally K. Ride in 1984 Source: Wikimedia Commons Anyone for tennis? If the world had turned a little differently, Sally Ride might have been discussed as a tennis star, not an astronaut. She began playing tennis aged 10, and won a scholarship to a High School for Girls. At one point she was within the US top 20 on the junior…

  • Safety first: risk as a theme in the Electrical Age

    Guest blog by Madeleine Smith, University of Leeds This is the fourth of a series of blogs written by Liberal Arts students at the University of Leeds to celebrate the Electrical Association for Women (EAW) centenary in 2024. This project has been supported by Professor Graeme Gooday. These blogs on early EAW activities are based on themes that the students selected from reading digitised versions of the first two volumes (1926-1935) of The Electrical Age (for Women). You can read Madeleine’s first blog here . Introduction The second volume of the Electrical Association for Women’s journal, the Electrical Age , covers the period from July 1930 to October 1935 and shows significantly greater focus on safety-related themes in the product advertisements than the first volume (1926-1930)…

  • Changing the internet, one Wikipedia entry at a time

    Those of us who are interested in history have a big stake in the accuracy of the historical record. History changes as new records come to light, and as researchers bring new perspectives to old accounts. That’s why it’s so important that online resources like Wikipedia are kept updated. In 2016, the IET hosted its first Wikipedia event with the University of Leeds, the University of Kent and the Women’s Engineering Society. It started as an activity to commemorate the First World War, as many women working in engineering in the UK first entered the workforce in wartime. The success of this event and other WW1 focused activities led to the Women’s Engineering Society Centenary Trail, a national campaign to discover and publish the stories of women engineers using Wikipedia. One of the WES…

  • A Systems Engineer's journey through circuits, nuclear and sci-fi dreams

    In the next of our 'My Engineering Career' blog series, we hear from EngX Community Member Ian Belger , a Strategic Digital Consultant at Jacobs, volunteer for the IET Nuclear Engineering Network and a Chartered Fellow of the IET. Ian tells us about his career in the Nuclear Industry and some of his proudest moments as an Engineer: My name is Ian Belger. I’m 62 years old and I now work for Jacobs as a Strategic Digital Consultant. In July 1985, I graduated with an Electrical and Electronic degree, followed by a PhD in Control Systems, achieved in 1991. During my early career I worked on the design of plant control systems (PLCs, SCADA systems and DCS systems). As I moved companies and progressed upwards, I took up more managerial / leadership roles, although still within the broad context…

  • 2023 winner of the IET Control and Automation Doctoral Dissertation Prize

    Each year the Control and Automation Technical Network is delighted to offer a Doctoral Dissertation Prize. The Prize recognises a student for their research excellence in the field of Control and Automation. The award is open to all relevant students who were awarded their PhD in the general area of Control and Automation, at a UK university In 2023 the Technical Network awarded the Prize to Dr Kaiwen Chen from Imperial College London for his paper titled 'Adaptive Control for Time-Varying Systems: Congelation and Interconnection'. Kaiwen Chen received the B.Sc. degree (Hons.) in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA, and the B.Eng. degree in automation from the Elite Program of the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in 2016, the M…

  • The rise and fall of the floating ship

    On this day in (engineering) history… June 4, 1910 - Christopher Cockerell, English engineer, invented the hovercraft (d. 1999) On Saturday, June 4, in the summer of 1910, anyone standing outside ‘Wayside’, a house on Cavendish Avenue, in the university city of Cambridge, would have noticed the comings and goings of a birth in the family that lived there - midwife, a doctor, family members. The Cockerell family who lived at Wayside were famous already, their newborn son, Christopher would make them even more famous by inventing the hovercraft. Sir Christopher Cockerell in 1976 Source: Wikimedia Commons Famous father and his famous friends Christopher’s father, Sir Sydney Cockerell was a typographer and Director of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum. Before that, he had been secretary…

  • IET France Local Network visit to ITER and the Observatoire de Haute Provence (OHP) 27th-28th May 2024

    The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) France Network in partnership with the Institute of Civil Engineers organized a visit to the ITER construction site and the Observatoire de Haute Provence for their respective members and guests. The ITER visit included a tour of the construction site including the main building and the tokamak ‘pit’ in which the reactor will be assembled as well as a presentation provided by Ms Margaret Graham, IET Honorary Fellow and Project Manager in charge of the Ion Cyclotron Project (the plasma resonance heating system), in which she outlined some of the great engineering challenges in constructing the research reactor. ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) has been in construction since 2007 and is currently expected to be…

  • The Application of Artificial Intelligence in Functional Safety

    The concern is not with the raw engineering challenges of developing the software and hardware parts of the solution, or with the nuances of creating a robust AI component, but with the understanding and successful integration of these solutions into our everyday lives. Many of the components within systems that utilise AI are not built in the same way as software and hardware components and therefore traditional systems development practices and associated methodologies do not account for the additional challenges faced during the development of AI. Moreover, the methods and techniques used to implement an AI algorithm are very different to those recommended under conventional safety standards. Hence, there is a ‘gap’ in being able to demonstrate that AI complies with conventional good practice…

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