| Rescues and Safety
As a lifelong safety
professional who has witnessed the aftermath of too many avoidable
jobsite tragedies, I was one of those who initially said,
"I’d rather talk about prevention," when I
heard ENR was doing a special report, "Minutes to Live,"
on accident rescues (ENR 11/22 p. 23).
Now that I have read the issue,
I must commend ENR’s efforts. You have done the industry
a great service, even if you only persuade one owner, one
construction manager, or one foreman to think more deeply
about ensuring the safety of his or her work force, every
day and on every job. Training and preparedness are always
the best route.
We at the Construction Safety Council
know all too well that improving jobsite safety is a year-round,
24/7 commitment that requires constant vigilance. The persistent
prevalence of construction-related deaths and injuries is
still the shame of our great industry. Surely, ENR could
devote some editorial space each week to this vital subject.
From 15 years on the front lines, we have learned that the
more you think about safety, the harder it is not to be safe.
And the more you think about safety for yourself, the harder
it is not to think about the safety of co-workers and passersby.
As
chair of the Readiness and Homeland Security Committee of
the Society of American Military Engineers’ New York
City Post, I found the Nov. 22 issue great reading. With so
much attention focused on readiness and prevention, the thought
of rescue and recovery gets forgotten. "It can’t
happen to me" leads to a lack of participation in planning
and practicing. The real life examples that you presented
should give everyone reason to pause and participate.
On-the-Job-Learning
I
read with great interest your article on the plight of our
young engineering graduates (ENR 12/6 p. 26). It appears from
your articles and from our professional experience that colleges
are not only missing the boat in preparing students for the
business world, but they are also not fulfilling their obligation
to teach students about how to apply their knowledge.
We have been in private practice
for more than 30 years, and during that time, we have found
that it takes up to three years to make an engineering graduate
a productive member of the firm. Then they leave for a better
position.
While architects have had to complete
a five-year curriculum in order to obtain a degree in architecture,
my suggestion is not to extend the engineering degree to five
years as has been suggested. I suggest having students work
in the field during their summer vacation time. If you were
to attach a credit value to each semester that the student
works in an engineer’s office, the college could then
monitor the student’s progress. Students would discover
that engineering is not a boring and unchallenging profession.
A second suggestion is the use
of adjunct professors, those that work in their selected field
of engineering. Generally, full-time professors do not have
the knowledge of what we require in the field. They are consumed
with teaching academics of the profession and do not have
the practical knowledge required to be successful in the management
or business portion.
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