What is Engineering?

These tools adopt the notion that engineering is decision-making under uncertainty. The decisions usually involve the design, construction, and maintenance of infrastructure like buildings, bridges, dams, roads, or water treatment facilities. A particular focus here is on decisions made in structural engineering, which is one discipline of civil engineering.

The decisions are often made in an iterative process between establishing candidate designs by some approximate design procedure and analyzing their suitability. The analysis requires careful attention to the modelling, and each analysis culminates with a decision to accept or reject the candidate design. Under certain circumstances, this iterative process is automated by optimization algorithms. Regardless, it poses the classical decision problem "How Safe is Safe Enough?" In this toolsbox it is argued that the answer should be based on a broad definition of safety that includes economical, environmental, and social impacts.

Some engineers focus heavily on technical aspects of engineering and do not participate actively in the decision making. The reason is that prescriptive codes often play the role of the decision maker. This code-oriented practice has certain benefits. It ensures a uniform practice and it provides a repository for knowledge. However, the code-oriented practice may discourage the engineer from asking critical questions about the decisions that their work imply. This is unfortunate, because engineering decisions have a variety of implications. Some are considered by the code-writing committees, but others may not be. Therefore, instead of underbidding each other to get jobs where decisions are made by codes, engineers should become more involved in decision making. One objective of this website is to provide tools that help engineers play a greater role in making and recommending good decision, both in engineering and elsewhere in society.