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The Structural Engineer, Volume 77, Issue 3, 1999
Well known and well-used for management purposes, spreadsheets are user friendly and exceedingly poweful. However they are not perhaps being exploited as much as they should be in structural engineering design, where they have tremendous ability to speed up design processes. C.H. Goodchild and J. Lupton
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind (Sir Winston Churchill). ‘What are we going to do?’ said Baby Tiger to Mama Tiger in the jungle. ‘Here comes a hunter, and he has five rifles, three special sighting scopes, and devices to allow him to see in the dark!‘Hush!’ answered Mama Tiger, and she taught her cub how to sneak up from behind and pounce. The hunter was never heard of again’, This just goes to show that, whilst technology is very useful, it will never be a substitute for knowledge, and it is knowledge and information handling that engineering is all about. P.M. Debney
CPD - what form should it take? Roger Taylor‘s letter (17 November 1998) has raised widespread comment. Chris Bailey has written: I started my own practice 2 years ago, and it now has a staff of 22. Twelve months ago I employed my first graduate and felt a high degree of responsibility for her formative years in our industry. I hoped, if not expected, that our Institution would be able to offer help and assistance to me - advice on approved training courses, an introduction to the local branch, advice to employers, etc. Sadly, this was not so; my plea for help resulted in a six-page leaflet describing the route to chartered membership, as though this should be a graduate’s only real ambition.