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Engineering and its status within government26 November 2008The Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills (IUSS) Committee held its first evidence gathering session on ‘Engineering in Government’ towards the end of last month. Government departments presently enjoy the benefit of ‘science’ advice when they need it, but ‘engineering’ does not appear to have quite the same degree of representation in the corridors of power. That imbalance is now being addressed, as the institutions representing the engineering professions were given the opportunity to air their concerns at this initial hearing.
The Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET) was represented by deputy president, Professor Christopher Snowden, who claims that the presentations made to the Committee clearly demonstrated the value that the institutions, the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) and the profession at large can add to the development of government policies, in addition to the delivery of government projects and programmes.
In its written evidence, the IET said that it considered the government’s use of engineering advice and, in particular, its use of resources like the professional engineering institutions was “ad hoc and uncoordinated in nature”. The IET believes the government does not formally acknowledge the role of engineering in policy making and may even be unaware of the resources available to it.
In a widely representative written submission to the IUSS Committee, the RAE cited the relatively recent example of energy policy (particularly the viability of sustainable sources), which it believes has suffered due to a lack of engineering input at an early stage. “A sound engineering insight would have given a clearer picture of the contributions of the different energy technologies, the timescales in which they could conceivably come on-stream and the measures necessary to mitigate risk – whether technical, political, commercial or otherwise,” the Academy asserts.
Engineers’ views, says the RAE, are also essential to identify barriers to certain policy solutions as well as ways to circumvent or overcome them. Micro-generation of electricity through wind power might be recommended, it says, but this recommendation is undermined by the fact that the electricity grid is not currently designed to cope with the feeding back of large amounts of power. With the exception of some locally engineered solutions, the national electricity distribution system is essentially designed to be one way.
The RAE offers similar examples of such shortcomings in its submission to the Committee, including the ‘Eco-Towns’ Challenge Panel, which had no engineering input; large public IT procurement and the lack of practical engineering assessment, and the limited opportunities afforded for engineering input into the Defence Science Advisory Council.
The RAE also mentions the government’s preference for procuring engineering advice from external consultants – advice that is often of “variable quality” it asserts. The Academy gives the example of recent reports prepared for the low carbon cars strategy, which were produced by third party consultants acting under considerable time constraints. In the RAE’s view, these contained inaccuracies that would be obvious to an engineer with relevant expertise, but not necessarily to an official without that expertise or access to it.
Engineering expertise is needed within government departments to ensure the quality of the procurement and quality control of that advice.
There are good models of engineering in government from around the world. The RAE cites one or two examples in its submission to the Committee, including that of the USA, where there is a constitutional relationship between the Executive, the Legislature and the National Academies. In China, too, there exists a close relationship between engineering and government; according to the RAE, the status of engineers within the Chinese administration is something that the UK could draw lessons from. Contact Details and Archive...Most Viewed Articles... |
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