Whenever anyone has a question these days, the first solution is usually a quick internet search. But sometimes engineering professionals have a specific techinical query that cannot be answered by smugly punching it into Google. That's when they go to one of the many places online that other engineers congregate, waiting for an interesting challenge.

At the Eng-Tips Forums engineers of many disciplines gather to seek advice and and debate the different elements of their work. There are forums for a number of diverse disciplines, from Aeronautics and Biomechanics to Nuclear and Petroleum Engineering. And all this discourse happens at such a high level that it frightens off any potential trolls or spammers (the scourge of public webboards the world over). The level of prerequisite knowledge needed to follow most of the discussions certainly frightens off the uninitiated, but Eng-Tips is designed for engineers to discuss their work in detail, without having to slow down and explain everything for the laymen.

Those in the construction business would probably be drawn to the Civil/Environmental Engineering and Structural Engineering forums. While most of the topics deal with issues such as "Concrete Aggregate Correction Factor" or "Calculate Torsional Constant for Tubular Truss," many of the discussions focus on less esoteric subjects. One of the busiest and highest rated threads in the Civil Engineering forum right now is What to do about unethical former employer. One civil engineer's question about their employer's habit of making employees rewrite time sheets has sparked a heated debate. The posters have largely broken into two camps: with some saying that time sheet "massaging" is common at civil engineering firms and never gets audited, while others shake their heads and have even begun to crack a few Enron jokes. There is still a level of civility to the discussion, but it is clearly a divisive and sensitive issue for many of the commentators.

And the conversations don't stop with technical questions and debates over business practice. One of the largest and highest rated threads this past year in the Structural Engineering forum was on the tunnel ceiling collapse at Boston's Big Dig project. What started out as a bit of amateur forensic engineering soon became an in-depth discussions of the technologies that may have caused the failure of the concrete drop ceiling. Experts, with years of experience using the kind of epoxy coated bolts that were found to be the cause of the collapse, weighed in with their own assessments of what went wrong. It's probably more than the average observer is willing to sift through, but for those engineers looking for a more technical discussion about the Big Dig collapse than newspapers provided, it's a very good read.

The Eng-Tip forums are not just a place for engineers to impress one another with the depth of their knowledge however. In fact they even show a little humility. In the Engineering Language/Grammar Skills forum, engineers recognize that despite their aptitude for math and science, many in their profession lack the ability to write and communicate clearly. The whole forum is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but in addition to it's educational value it provides a place for engineers to post some of the more egregious offenses to the English language they encounter in their daily work.

Forums such as Eng-Tips are useful for answering esoteric questions and debating aspects of the industry, but there is more to it than that. While engineers may only encounter a handful of people in their daily work with whom they can discuss technical issues in detail, an online forum such as this reminds them that they belong to a much larger order, and don't have to feel like they are laboring away in obscurity. Collaboration is a powerful tool in engineering, and it never hurts to let another set of eyes look at a problem.