In case the title of this blog is lost on you (much as I’m
regularly finding my endless pop culture references are lost to the current
generation of grads) a blog about engineering in a digital age needed to begin
with a reference that fit with what we’ll be posting about. If you’ve still not
clocked on, the quote is from HAL 9000. If you’ve still not clocked on, go and
watch 2001: A Space Odyssey right now, shame on you….shame…..shame*….
The film gave a chilling insight into a possible future and
whilst this blog is going to steer clear of speculation as to the aggressive
nature of humanity and how it may be eventually mimicked by Artificial
Intelligence, we will be talking a lot about the technology driven changes that
are going on in the engineering world and how they are affecting us at every
level.
In further blog writing tradition, it’s time to introduce
the principal authors, Matt Burton (that’s me), Tom Webster and Ricky Feigin.
The three of us are structural engineers who met in AECOM sports and have had
many an engineering adventure (think Lord of the Rings but with geometric
modelling, grasshopper scripts and a whole heap of steelwork). We’ve shared a
passion for pushing digital technologies in our day to day work and have
noticed that there aren’t as many engineers out there shouting about these
technologies as there should be. We’re also pretty damn good table football
players and take such matters very seriously, as our latest team outing will
attest to (Back Middle, left to right- Tom is fake bearded Brazillian Ronaldo,
I have a ginger beard and a classic Sampdoria 2001 shirt and Ricky is the spit
of Warwick Capper).
Sadly
our time in the same team has since ended and Tom is off with Webb Yates, Ricky
is soon to be taking up a role with Beca in Melbourne and, well, I’ve been
described as an AECOM lifer. Thankfully all of the opinions on this blog and
associated material is our own and not reflective of our companies, and, more
importantly, our shared passion for digital engineering is ongoing and we’ll now
be bringing opinions and developments from different parts of the structural
world and from different continents.
Between
us we’ve designed schools, research buildings, commercial towers, World Cup stadia,
train depots, retail centres, warehouses, airports and internationally renowned
Pavilions. Digital Engineering has played a part in each and every project
we’ve been involved with and like a cross between a concise brain dump and a
very loose lecture we’ve decided to start writing about and sharing our
experiences about Digital Engineering.
We’ll
hopefully be able to bring the opinions of some of the many great building
specialists we’ve either worked with or continue to work with to the blogs and
in occasionally have them write a guest blog.
We’ll
also have some details (and possibly videos) of papers that my colleagues and I
presented at this year’s IASS conference in Amsterdam on Digital Engineering
techniques.
Some of
the upcoming blog subject titles we’ll sharing in the upcoming weeks and months
in no particular order (crazy project deadlines and unknown unknowns
notwithstanding):
- Pandametrics (The Zen Art of Parametrics)
- Enter the Panda
- Pandametrics (or how I learned to stop worrying and love BIM)
- Do Engineers Have Electric Dreams?
- Pandametrics (a wolf in sheep’s clothing)
What do
these bizarre and often Panda related titles mean and how do they apply to your
workflows? You’ll have to check back in for an update, or keep an eye out on
our twitter feed.
*if
that reference is lost then it’s time to get up to date with Game of
Thrones…shame…shame**
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