I was president of the IET for 2016-17, and have been asked by government to gather practical and innovative ideas from our Engineering communities. So, please enter any ideas you might have in this thread that might help address and mitigate the Covid-19 crisis. Ideas might include digital tracking / monitoring through therapy equipment and beyond. Even ideas outside your usual expertise domain will be welcome. Now’s the time for Engineering to show we can change the world!
I was on a LinkedIn thread and asked to partake in this conversation, it's been a very long time since I entered these walls. lol...
I've skimmed the above discussion and please forgive me if I have missed some points already discussed. It feels like there are some basic issues that are going unaddressed, but have largely been touched upon.
Organisation:
This seems to be the primary thread, and most the others are pretty short. A selection of core teams to individual threads under a central contact for each subject would seem a sensible option, if we have multiple projects discussed on one thread it's just going to degenerate into a melee. The vectors of need must be isolated, and folks subscribe to their chosen direction. There have been some sensible suggestions of strategic direction above.
Fundamentally:
Funding. I know it's not the virtue signal anyone wants to send, but personally I'm a very small micro consultancy and I'm going to struggle to stay in business like many others. So if folks are to dedicate their professional billed time to a national effort, they need to know who is paying the food bills. It's ok for the University Academics and the large company management classes, but your average engineer needs approval to spend their time on a "skunk works" project, and the most experienced experts in the country, the consultants... have no large finances to fall back on.
Reinventing the wheel:
Whatever we do here, needs to be done on a tight timeline. It needs to protect peoples lives, and it needs to be as risk averse as possible. I'm an embedded systems engineer, I specialise in RT software development. In this situation the LAST thing I would want to do is write new code. Code requires rigour, inspection, validation, verification, etc. We don't have time. There are products out there, they have undertaken rigorous qualification processes. The software has been locked down for years. The project should be to construct a platform from common industrial parts that can be driven by that existing pre-qualified software. So int he first instance we would need the Software Lead and Hardware Lead of the original company on the phone to tell us the hidden requirements of the platform. What timing issues are in the defect list, do we have the full Mod status list, can we trust the Gerbers or are they subject to assembly modification changes. If they can be trusted, we need to know are all the BOM parts available, if not what isn't and how can we create a mod to use parts that Farnell have in ample stock. At that point we hit the go button with a large "at risk" buy of 1000 boards, populated from two UK suppliers on Ultra urgent. This allows us to leverage everything WE HAVE. The software need not change, we don't need a new processor unless the one in use is obsolete, and if it is we need either lifetime stock form the supplier, or we need the nearest possible alternative and ONLY THEN do we consider software changes and ideally done by the original team in the original build environment.
Our priority HAS to be to LEVERAGE existing tech. Lego brick style.
Repurposing:
Who remembers M*A*S*H ? Klinger. No I am not suggesting you all don womens clothing and take up guard duty. He could source kit form anywhere. It's a military tradition. Make do and mend. We need to use stuff nobody would think of, leverage in depth industry knowledge of existing processes.
I noted some folks are looking for specific Stainless Steel Sheet for medical kit, well who else uses it? Industrial Kitchen fitters maybe?
Oxygen, who uses O2 in large amounts? Well maybe folks like the Sewage Industry who use it to encourage bacterial grown in the sewage processing. So maybe those O2 pumps can be repurposed by the use of a damn great tank, that any number of LPG suppliers nationally could potentially provide. what is needed from us, is any modification needed to the bottles to make it safe. To find the O2 sources. Who uses oxyacetyline these days, ship yards, rig breakers. They ain't working.... they don't need the O2.
High accuracy variable gas valves... Something to squeeze and release a length of rubber fuel pipe?
I don't mean to be bullish, but there is a quite focused requirement here to hit key targets. It's not really an innovation fiesta and I'm worried that's what it's being billed as. It's an applied engineering brain puzzle, Apollo 13. MacGyver style. Not "here's my new unproven controller with a flywheel delay loop to support your breathing... oh yeah, that printf... sorry!"....
I was on a LinkedIn thread and asked to partake in this conversation, it's been a very long time since I entered these walls. lol...
I've skimmed the above discussion and please forgive me if I have missed some points already discussed. It feels like there are some basic issues that are going unaddressed, but have largely been touched upon.
Organisation:
This seems to be the primary thread, and most the others are pretty short. A selection of core teams to individual threads under a central contact for each subject would seem a sensible option, if we have multiple projects discussed on one thread it's just going to degenerate into a melee. The vectors of need must be isolated, and folks subscribe to their chosen direction. There have been some sensible suggestions of strategic direction above.
Fundamentally:
Funding. I know it's not the virtue signal anyone wants to send, but personally I'm a very small micro consultancy and I'm going to struggle to stay in business like many others. So if folks are to dedicate their professional billed time to a national effort, they need to know who is paying the food bills. It's ok for the University Academics and the large company management classes, but your average engineer needs approval to spend their time on a "skunk works" project, and the most experienced experts in the country, the consultants... have no large finances to fall back on.
Reinventing the wheel:
Whatever we do here, needs to be done on a tight timeline. It needs to protect peoples lives, and it needs to be as risk averse as possible. I'm an embedded systems engineer, I specialise in RT software development. In this situation the LAST thing I would want to do is write new code. Code requires rigour, inspection, validation, verification, etc. We don't have time. There are products out there, they have undertaken rigorous qualification processes. The software has been locked down for years. The project should be to construct a platform from common industrial parts that can be driven by that existing pre-qualified software. So int he first instance we would need the Software Lead and Hardware Lead of the original company on the phone to tell us the hidden requirements of the platform. What timing issues are in the defect list, do we have the full Mod status list, can we trust the Gerbers or are they subject to assembly modification changes. If they can be trusted, we need to know are all the BOM parts available, if not what isn't and how can we create a mod to use parts that Farnell have in ample stock. At that point we hit the go button with a large "at risk" buy of 1000 boards, populated from two UK suppliers on Ultra urgent. This allows us to leverage everything WE HAVE. The software need not change, we don't need a new processor unless the one in use is obsolete, and if it is we need either lifetime stock form the supplier, or we need the nearest possible alternative and ONLY THEN do we consider software changes and ideally done by the original team in the original build environment.
Our priority HAS to be to LEVERAGE existing tech. Lego brick style.
Repurposing:
Who remembers M*A*S*H ? Klinger. No I am not suggesting you all don womens clothing and take up guard duty. He could source kit form anywhere. It's a military tradition. Make do and mend. We need to use stuff nobody would think of, leverage in depth industry knowledge of existing processes.
I noted some folks are looking for specific Stainless Steel Sheet for medical kit, well who else uses it? Industrial Kitchen fitters maybe?
Oxygen, who uses O2 in large amounts? Well maybe folks like the Sewage Industry who use it to encourage bacterial grown in the sewage processing. So maybe those O2 pumps can be repurposed by the use of a damn great tank, that any number of LPG suppliers nationally could potentially provide. what is needed from us, is any modification needed to the bottles to make it safe. To find the O2 sources. Who uses oxyacetyline these days, ship yards, rig breakers. They ain't working.... they don't need the O2.
High accuracy variable gas valves... Something to squeeze and release a length of rubber fuel pipe?
I don't mean to be bullish, but there is a quite focused requirement here to hit key targets. It's not really an innovation fiesta and I'm worried that's what it's being billed as. It's an applied engineering brain puzzle, Apollo 13. MacGyver style. Not "here's my new unproven controller with a flywheel delay loop to support your breathing... oh yeah, that printf... sorry!"....
