Structural Failures and the Growth of Engineering Knowledge.

Blockley, David; HARRIS, SIR ALAN; TWORT, WGN; GEDDES, WGN; SHILSTON, AW; HENDERSON, JR; CRANSTON, WB; HANCOCK, PHD; MANNERS, W; ARULIAH, P; WOOD, AM MUIR; Safier, A; WALLEY, F; ADDIS, W; POPPER, K

doi:10.1680/iicep.1981.1790

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For Hayek, knowledge is pre-eminently practical, embodied in concrete tools, customs and habits, as well as in abstract rules, symbols and inarticulate techniques of thought. His views on the growth of rationality are close to Karl Popper's views on the growth of scientific knowledge (Popper, 1976) and its relationship with the growth of engineering knowledge (Blockley & Henderson, 1980). However, equating Hayek's 'rationalist constructivism' with 'an engineering mentality' is seriously misleading.…”

Section: Engineering Systemsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Exchanging Obligations: Accounting for All Forms of Capital

Blockley

2022

Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Economics and engineering have much in common since both are concerned with making decisions to act, based on evidence from many sources including science. An analysis of financial trading from an engineering-systems perspective leads to a theory of obligations as a means of capturing natural, social and human capital. The treatment is based on an analogy between gravitational and electromagnetic fields of forces and fields of human interactions. An ‘obligation’ is defined as an underived unit of ‘stuff’ analogous to gravitational ‘mass’ or electromagnetic ‘charge’ in a field of interacting processes. Identifying the forces generated in the field of human obligations will help create new policy and practical interventions. These should be designed (as engineers’ design) systems to maximise net worth that includes a wide set of natural and social assets, such as biodiversity, air quality and reduced inequality. JEL: Q50, Q01, E00, E60, O11, O14, C60

show abstract

Section: Engineering Systemsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Exchanging Obligations: Accounting for All Forms of Capital

Blockley

2022

Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Research studies of engineering failures over a period of 30 years have shown that technically qualified professionals often do not adequately address issues at the interface between technically complex problems (for example innovative structural forms such as box girder bridges in the 1970s) and human and organisational difficulties (for example political, economic, and social pressures that cause cost overruns, delays, and inefficiencies). In a series of papers 6 , 9 - 19 the investigations led to an approach that aims at reducing the gaps between what we know, what we do and why things go wrong. The approach is based on systems thinking.…”

Section: Systems Thinking Through Systemic Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating Health and Social Care Services

Blockley

Stirrat

Alexander

et al. 2022

Glob Adv Health Med

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background A recent UK Government draft Heath White Paper follows the NHS England long term plan when it states that NHS England requires “a new framework that builds on changes already being made as well as building in the flexibility to support the system to tackle challenges of the future”. At present the structure of Health and Social Care Services UK reporting to Government seems unhelpfully complex and opaque. Objective The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the building of a new framework using a generic approach to identify and use ‘systemic processes’ to facilitate the integration of Health and Social Care services in NHS England and elsewhere. Methods We highlight some of the critical issues that are currently hindering integration and set out a new way of understanding the structure of NHS England through an ‘inside-out’ analysis of systemic processes. Results We describe and give three examples of existing systemic processes as ‘Consulting a patient’, ‘Enhancing a Single point of access’ - to mental health services and ‘Delivering health and social care services England’. Conclusions Rethinking the interactions between existing organisations could arguably bring considerable benefits including cost savings, better co-ordination, less ‘admin’ stress on staff where the work is done and provide more organisational adaptability in an uncertain future. Ultimately our suggestions are aimed at helping people to deliver better patient care - the impelling purpose of all health and social care services.

show abstract

“…The key previous works on engineering failure such as Smith (1976), Sibly and Walker (1977), Blockley and Henderson (1980), Petroski (2005) and Scheer (2010) all base their analyses predominantly on historic cases. This is because the underlying causes of failure tend to transcend the particular details of an individual case.…”

Section: Detailed Case Studies Of Failurementioning

confidence: 99%

Disaster and success: design lessons from history

O’Dwyer¹

2013

Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper discusses the pedagogical advantages of the structured inclusion of engineering history in undergraduate engineering programmes. The author argues that studying multiple case histories involving failure allows students to progress from learning particular lessons from individual disasters to identifying features common to many failures. Architectural students take modules on the history of architecture and construction as part of the development of their creative skills. This paper promotes the use of a range of historic engineering examples of successful design to encourage engineering students to recognise creativity as a key feature of good engineering design. It uses a wide range of historic engineering failures and successful engineering designs to show how such examples can be used in a structured way to promote responsible and creative design. The examples of failure range from the Tay Bridge disaster to the brittle fracture of the Liberty ships: examples of success range from Brunelleschi's scheme to construct the Dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore to Peter Rice of Arup's development of spherical shell elements to realise Utzon's concept for the roof of Sydney's opera house.

show abstract

Structural Failures and the Growth of Engineering Knowledge.

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Exchanging Obligations: Accounting for All Forms of Capital

Exchanging Obligations: Accounting for All Forms of Capital

Integrating Health and Social Care Services

Disaster and success: design lessons from history

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About