The Somewhat Lost Art of Excellence in Engineering
One of my mentors, but more importantly a good friend this profession has given me, is Paul Gorton. Paul is a former engineering boss at MDA1, and a living goldmine about the art of doing great engineering. Some years ago, he kindly sent me a few books from his personal collection. From those, one book, titled “Excellence in Engineering” by W.H Roadstrum (Wiley, 1967), stood out. Roadstrum’s work goes to great extents to define an engineering process which seeks to project its practice away from mediocrity. According to Roadstrum himself, his book was inspired by another book called “Excellence” by John W. Gardner2, which dives into analyzing the relationship between excellence, education and equality. One phrase from Gardner’s work has become quite famous: “Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well”. Another bit, not as famous, goes:
“An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”
Engineering is a craft, as plumbing is. But just over-glorified. Such exaltation combined with our past achievements can easily blind us from pursuing the better. A pursuit which should never stop nor relent.
Being excellent means being both efficient as well as effective in delivering to customers and in the process deriving pride and satisfaction from the work and the finished product.
Excellence is an endeavor, not an end goal and it spurs us to wake up each day to perform better and become better at our craft, no matter how ordinary.