Examination of Witnesses (Questions 79
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 30 APRIL 2008
LORD BROWNE
OF MADINGLEY,
MR NORMAN
HASTE AND
PROFESSOR MICHAEL
KELLY
Q79 Chairman: Good morning, welcome
to our second panel of distinguished engineers this morning. It
is rather sad that our first panel have got to get back to school,
rather than hear what you have to say, but perhaps that is one
of the reasons we are where we are. Welcome, indeed, to Professor
Michael Kelly, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department
for Communities and Local Government. Welcome to Mr Norman Haste,
the Chief Operating Officer of Laing O'Rourke, once described
as the Brunel of the 20th century—what a title; and Lord
Brown of Madingley, the President of the Royal Academy of Engineering,
who was once described as the most admired CEO, and I am sure
that was well-deserved. May I start with you, Lord Browne and
perhaps just get you, as the President of the Royal Academy of
Engineering, to tell us what an engineer is; if someone asks you
that question, how do you answer that, in a nutshell?
Lord Browne of Madingley: I start
with the very biggest definition, which is that an engineer designs
the future and makes a big difference to the world. She or he
does it by conceiving something, designing it, then making sure
it is implemented in order to operate it. So, the full suite of
things that an engineer does is from the idea to the reality and
in that design the future of the world, or a piece of equipment
or a step in life.
Q80 Chairman: Why do you think, then,
that there is this difficulty of relating that very simple description
to young people?
Lord Browne of Madingley: As I
reflect more and more on what I see people do, people are always
very excited about the new and the novel and about the concept
and the idea. Implementation, in all walks of life, be it Government,
business, or anything, implementation gets less of a profile.
People get bored with it and the real part of engineering is,
of course, delivery through implementation. In some ways, engineers
become invisible at that point, and that invisibility takes away
the excitement of what engineers can do and what they are really
contributing. Invisibility is not good for inspiring young people
to do something that is exciting and that their peers can then
say to them, "Yes, you've made a difference; you've actually
made a real difference to the world". If you look at what
engineers do, that is exactly what they do, they make a real difference
to the world.
Q81 Chairman: Mr Haste, you must
have been devastated to sit in the room here and nobody had heard
of you.
Mr Haste: Oh, they are quite young.
Q82 Chairman: What attracted you
to engineering? Why did you have this huge passion for engineering,
which clearly you have?
Mr Haste: I suppose in the first
instance it was in my blood, because I came from a family of engineers,
although both my brother and my father were mechanical engineers
and I opted to move into civil and structural engineering. From
a fairly young age, like most children of the post-war era, I
had the Meccano set and those sorts of things and you learnt how
to create things, even at that age. The major inspiration for
me came in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I was brought up in
East Midlands and the Humber Bridge had been a figment of everybody's
imagination at the time and probably a political football at the
same time. Anyway, it was given the go-ahead and I said that I
was going to work on that, and it took off after that. It is really
about creativity, it is about making a difference, it is about
contributing to the future well-being—and you may think
this is trite -of the earth in general, because we have some really
big problems worldwide, some of which I am involved in at the
moment in India. It is only engineers who will be able to solve
things like water problems, power energy problems and infrastructure
problems.
Q83 Chairman: I was a school teacher
for a long time before I came into the House and when I think
of the physics and mathematics lessons that I have witnessed over
the years, they are a million miles away from the creative vision
which you are talking about, and I do not know how we bridge that
gap, if you will pardon the pun.
Mr Haste: That is one of the things
that is lacking in schools, in being able to give children a holistic
picture.
Q84 Chairman: You do not think of
physics as creativity, do you. You do not put the two in the same
category.
Mr Haste: No, you do not think
about it, but I think all of us have to have a basic foundation
in the principal science subjects. With the advances that have
been made in the world over the past 20 years, just to show my
age, I never had a computer until 1982 and thereafter it has all
taken off. Children are very computer literate, very early; they
take their maths, science, physics and other subjects up to GCSE
and then things tend to fall away, particularly as far as those
who are interested in continuing maths and science. One of the
reasons for that is that within the school environment, children
are not taught about the holistic picture, in other words, how
maths, physics and computer science are applied. The principal
difference between engineers and pure scientists is that engineering
is about the application or the implementation of the sciences
and if we were able to show people how computer science and computer
applications go into developing, whether it is telecommunications,
tunnel boring machines, all those kinds of things, they would
get a much better picture and be much more excited by the prospect
of going into engineering.
Q85 Chairman: Professor Kelly, if
I can call you an academic engineer, for shorthand, is that derogatory?
Professor Kelly: No.
Q86 Chairman: Do you feel, in academia,
that we pay enough attention to portraying engineering as a creative
discipline?
Professor Kelly: Yes, I think
we do. At the moment there is a debate. Lord Browne, referred
to create, design, implement and operate, which is essentially
the skill set. There is the other point, which is the basic facts,
and there is a continuing debate around the world that if you
put a complicated piece of equipment in front of a sixth former
and ask them to take it apart and put it together you have a problem
because there is a lot of stuff that they do not know. The question
is whether that process gives them a bit of an experience of getting
towards at least the implementation/operation side. There is a
continuing debate around that. The creativity side comes out,
particularly in Cambridge, where the students spend time through
the supervisions with individual researches who tend, in every
hour, to put five minutes at the end on what they have been doing
for the past week.
Q87 Chairman: Do you think those
young engineers at university level, undergraduates and post-graduates,
spend enough time out in schools or in the community where they
are exciting the next generation of people to follow.
Professor Kelly: That whole concept
is a relatively recent thing. I know more closely what is going
on in the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, where there is a
systematic set of school visitations. There is at Engineering,
but I have not been as close to it, I tend to get more e-mails
from the Institute of Physics. It is most important that it is
people below the age of 25 who are doing that.
Q88 Chairman: Absolutely. That is
what the panel said.
Professor Kelly: Yes. I have been,
for example, back to my own school in New Zealand, just recently,
because I want to pick up a point that they made. It comes in
half the obits of Fellows of the Royal Society that it is school
teachers that inspire a disproportionate number of really successful
people. In my own case, I was taught by a De La Salle Brother
in a school in New Zealand, who taught me maths, physics and chemistry,
being two years out of Sydney University as a chemist. He was
turning himself into a geologist in real time, so it was his generally
inquiring mind, day after day, that set me up for it.
Q89 Chairman: I am trying to follow
this theme through in terms of how engineering is portrayed. Lord
Browne, the engineering sector seems to be haphazardly organised;
that is the most complementary thing I can say about it. Why do
we need 36 institutions to charter engineers? What is all that
about?
Lord Browne of Madingley: It is
a statement of "we are where we are". What was designed
in the Victorian era, when this all started, is very unlikely
to be applicable and right in the 21st century. But, we have to
recognise human motivation and structural paralysis that comes
through institutional building in that in these institutions there
are people who are doing a tremendous job, but they are aspiring
to the presidency or to the council of these institutions and
they are very unlikely to agree to abolish these institutions.
That is a very difficult thing to do and they are all set up quite
independently. Perhaps hope lies in building better bridges between
these institutions; confederating them; putting them in a place
where we can work with a more powerful unified voice on matters
that make a difference, to make sure that engineering is there
as an input into policy, not only for Government decision-making,
but also for industry decision-making, and to try and unify in,
to a degree possible, the voice. Some progress has been made from
time to time on specific items. I have recently convened, about
a year ago, a round table on one of the matters on which I believe
engineering could make a huge difference and one in which I obviously
have much experience, which is energy and climate change. There,
we have brought together the principal institutions to see what
we could do and where we thought engineering could make the biggest
difference. That was a successful intervention and one I would
like to see happen again and again. To repeat, we are where we
are, but if we were starting from here we would not be here.
Q90 Chairman: It is a bit ironic,
is it not, that engineers who shape the world and create and build
things are not capable of putting their own house together. Could
we start with the Academy? You are in charge of that, you are
all powerful.
Lord Browne of Madingley: That
is not true!
Q91 Chairman: Well, that is what
I hear. We heard, when we met you, when you very kindly hosted
a seminar for us at the Academy, the suggestion that instead of
calling it the Royal Academy of Engineering, it should be called
the Royal Academy of Engineers and therefore could incorporate
all these 36 bodies quite neatly. What did you think of that as
a suggestion?
Lord Browne of Madingley: There
are many different ways but, in the end, everything has to be
done on a voluntary basis. There is no "right" or "might"
here that can impel people to come together. I want to remind
you that the Royal Academy of Engineering started as the Fellowship
of Engineering and was very much to do with the people; it was
modelled after the Royal Society; it is an honour society, to
honour those of distinction in the engineering field. Beyond that,
it began to develop in its relatively short history of 30-odd
years, into something which then began to represent engineering
in specific areas and, in particular, to provide the top accolades
to engineers and research fellowships and studentships to those
of high merit. It has got much more to do to keep bringing engineering
to the table in matters that make a difference to the world, and
that is to where we have got to get the Royal Academy. To change
its name would be interesting in the end though it is a matter
of persuasion of people to come together to work so that their
force is amplified rather than cancelled by interference.
Q92 Chairman: So, Professor Kelly,
nothing is going to change, is it?
Professor Kelly: Things are happening
slowly. There are fewer engineering societies than there were
ten years ago because some of the smaller ones are gradually being
subsumed into larger ones. Whether we will get the challenge of
the electricals, civils or mechanicals all merging is another
matter. I do not see that on the immediate horizon.
Q93 Chairman: We have the Engineering
Council, the Engineering and Technology Board and the Royal Academy
of Engineering, surely we could start by having those three together.
Would that be possible?
Lord Browne of Madingley: I believe
anything is possible, of course, but all these things were set
up at different times for different purposes and, as I think everyone
is aware, the issue is never the setting up of an institutional
body, the very big issue is getting rid of it. There is never
a problem with invention here. The question is, has the time expired;
is the right thing happening, and what will happen to the funding
if something is removed? In the end, these things need to take
a natural path because, again, I come back to the point that it
is very difficult to get people to volunteer to do something unless
they are incorporated in something larger. I would like to see
that happening, but it is not something that can be done at the
flick of a switch.
Q94 Chairman: Mr Haste, how important
are these institutions? What difference would it have made to
you and your career and your achievements if they had not existed?
Mr Haste: The history of the engineering
institutions goes back to 1750, when there was no real demarcation
or separation of the engineering professions but, at that time,
there was a split and the term "civil engineering" was
introduced which marked the difference between military engineering
and engineering applied to developing the civilian world. There
has been a proliferation from that. For many people who are members
of those institutions, they do feel an affinity because they are
essentially learned societies which exist for the interests of
the members and therefore it is going to be self-perpetuating.
I was a supporter of the amalgamation of the electricals, mechanicals,
civils and the structurals into something that operated on similar
lines to the Australian Institute of Engineers. Although the Institution
of Engineers of Australia exists as a body representing all the
engineering professions, it has colleges within it, so that the
people who are very proud of their own discipline have their own
identity within it. I think that is something we should look at
again for the future. It is going to be self-perpetuating because
that is how engineers become chartered and are affiliated to their
profession.
Q95 Chairman: But if you had one
chartering body, then that would deal with that would it not?
Mr Haste: It would.
Q96 Chairman: That would be the way
forward. Do you think Government could intervene in that way and
say, "Right, we'll have one chartering body" and that
would force the issue. What do you think, Lord Browne? Should
we recommend that?
Lord Browne of Madingley: That
is obviously up to the Committee. But whatever this Committee
does, it is important to say that the recommendations probably
will happen in the way in which people think about the future
role of these institutions. I am very much with Mr Haste. I think
it would be tremendous to have them under one umbrella. I come
back to the point, not for organisational neatness, because that
does not matter, it is about how engineering is represented and
makes its point in decision-making, at the governmental, industry
and academic levels, to make sure that we do not have too many
people saying different things or maybe even saying the same thing
in a slightly different way and confusing people and not getting
their message across. That is the really important thing. There
are subsidiary things to do with efficiency, of course, and making
sure that people's time is not wasted, etc., but those are secondary.
Q97 Chairman: Lord Browne, I can
call myself an engineer; anybody can call themselves an engineer;
that title is not protected. Would that be one way in which we
could raise the status of engineers, as they do in Canada and
as they are just about to do in India, and to have "Eng"
as a real badge of honour?
Lord Browne of Madingley: It would
be a hard road to go along because of the proliferation of the
use of the word, but it should be a protected professional word;
I agree with you. People do not go around calling themselves physicians
unless they are physicians.
Q98 Dr Turner: You have masterminded
some fairly big projects in your time, Mr Haste, but there is
a perception that the United Kingdom is not very good at delivering
major projects. Do you think that is justified?
Mr Haste: No, I do not think it
is justified. I have a concern about whether it is society or
the way its government views engineering and it contributes to
the country in the wider world. We are very bad in this country
at celebrating success. When you say that we are not very good
at delivering projects, I can name a few projects that I and other
people have been involved in which have been tremendous successes.
Unfortunately, the success gets bound together with political
argument. If you take the Channel Tunnel, that was a fantastic
engineering success. I led a team of 600 people; engineers of
all disciplines, planning and designing Terminal 5 for six and
a half years, but unfortunately, instead of celebrating that as
an engineering success, it has become notorious because of British
Airways' troubles with their baggage handlers. That is putting
the wrong bias completely. What I would like to see is a much
greater celebration of success with engineering because we are
very good at it. There is a myth about having to bring American
programme managers in to manage our projects which is completely
ill-founded.
Q99 Dr Turner: I would like to ask
all of you for your views on the DIUS White Paper on the Innovation
Nation. Do you feel that the focus was wrong; that it was concentrating
far too much on the relationship between science in academia and
industry and not paying enough attention to the role of engineering
in innovation? Lord Browne, do you have a view?
Lord Browne of Madingley: It would
be easy to say that there is not enough attention being paid to
engineering, but it is much more complicated than that, obviously.
If I take the specific point of innovation, engineers must play
a very important role, but it is because of the following: if
you can educate engineers to look across a large number of disciplines—and
they are the people who can best deliver through implementation—and
also look to the science and to the commerce at the same time;
that is a perfectly educated engineer. Having people like that
would bias success in innovation. There are plenty of people like
that, for example, who exist in parts of the United States, where
you can see innovation getting to the point faster, more thoroughly
and more often, to a successful commercial end. It is education
in a broader sense.
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