I’ve been asked to write a regular column for PII, so I suppose I won't just launch into it. Let's start with introductions. For those of you who don't know me, I am a Chemical Engineer who also writes (mostly about Chemical Engineering). I've been writing for quite a while now, mostly on LinkedIn and also for Elsevier as their “Voice of Chemical Engineering”. I've also written some longer pieces as well as three books to date on process plant design (mainly for Elsevier and Wiley), and articles, mostly for Chemical Engineering, The Chemical Engineer and Chemical Engineering Progress magazines.
Writing is however a sideline for me. I'm a ‘proper’ chemical engineer. I'm not a chemical engineer in the sense used in academia – that I once did a degree in the subject, (or one vaguely related to it). I'm a chemical engineer in the sense that this is what I have done for a living since I graduated, for almost thirty years now. I'm a freelance, presently working for part of the week in Holland, in an infant formula plant, as well as having several projects on the go in the UK and elsewhere, all to do with effluent treatment problems.
I mainly work as a troubleshooter, process designer and expert witness nowadays, though I used to do a lot of training (mostly in the Middle and Far East) before the oil and gas market collapsed. I also worked as a university lecturer for a few years, hoping to bring some real-world engineering into Chem Eng teaching. I even made professor before I quit in disgust. I also quit the IChemE on similar grounds around the same time after being elected to its ruling council. I have a low opinion at an institutional level of both academia and most engineering institutions founded in inside knowledge, though I recognise that even the worst institutions can contain good people.
If you have already come across my writing then you will probably have gathered that I am not afraid to share my opinions on the parlous state of our institutions, the failure of engineering education to produce useful graduates, and the massive oversupply of engineering graduates. You will also know that I am no fan of cant, hypocrisy, greenwash, or corporate bullshit.
I've had a lot of opportunities to travel in this profession, though I only ever seem to travel East with work. Apart from Europe, I've worked in various locations in the Far and Middle East, even Pakistan. I’ve also worked in many different sectors. There isn't much of chemical engineering for which water (my specialist subject/substance) is not a main feedstock. Why does it matter that I've been around? Because it supports my belief that chemical engineering is about what is common to all sectors and countries. The narcissism of small differences can prevent homebodies and sector specialists for seeing this.
The last of my hobby-horses is related to this. I found in writing my first three books that my reviewers from different countries and sectors seemed to be disagreeing with each other, until I understood that they were actually using the same words to mean different things and different words to mean the same things. I often could not get them to see this though, and the narrower someone’s experience, the more likely they were to insist that the usage of a word or term was the only correct one. I was however intrigued by these differences, which led me to my latest book project. I'm currently writing a dictionary of chemical engineering, to be published by Elsevier, which tries to break down some of these linguistic misunderstandings.
(As an aside, I've been very disappointed to discover that some of the big institutions which issue standards expect enormous sums of money merely to quote the definitions of words contained in their standards (with attribution of course). They clearly have a rather inflated idea of how much a textbook author makes for their books: the fees each of the institutions wanted, per book, represented rather more than I earn per book. But that's institutions for you.)
I suppose my dislike of institutions and my preference for freelance work are strongly correlated. Other than my four years at the University of Nottingham, I haven't had a staff job since 1996. I've done some agency work, but mostly it's been proper freelancing. I'm basically not as interested in people as I am in problems. As I see it, once the problems are solved, there are others better suited to hanging around and watching nothing happen.
I don't know about you, but I love engineering. If I didn’t think it would mess up my next fee negotiation, I'd tell you that I'd do it for free. I don't really know what people mean by work-life balance and at 56 years old, I still find few things in life as exciting as my work. For me there is little as satisfying as figuring out what is wrong with something and how it can be put right, then seeing my solution work.
So that should give you an idea of my background and viewpoints. Next time, I'll get into it, where I discuss STEM
