(Part 1, NTUST, 5908701)

Part 1, Advanced Civil Construction, 台科大高等土木施工學教材(2023) 

MT KAO (Blog: http://mtkaoforum31.blogspot.tw/)

(mtkaoforum31@gmail.com)

1. The Change in Professional’s Earning and Social Status since Industrial Revolution; the Tendency the Young Engineers Drifting to the Unpredictable World Need to Know:

1). Comparison between the income through personal capability and efforts and that from investment and bequests. It changes since the industrial revolution and has influenced the allocation of talent.

(1). Prior to the industrial revolution in Europe, the ratio between the wealth generated from investment and bequeath was high compared to that generated from laboring (through personal capability and efforts). The ratio dropped significantly during the world war I and reached its lowest in 1970s symbolizing technology improvement was on the way and general public including professional had shared the benefit. But the figure raised up slightly in the years around 2010 - a possibility that it might be caused by affection of digital technology and globalization.

(2).  Proper income in 19 Century means at least you have to obtain 20 to 30 times of average national income, and only top 1% people would achieve it so as to be considered as riches. Professions like lawyer, accountant and engineer would get at best 10 times of average national income and considered as slightly better than the “poor”.

(3).  Lines from “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty, “Le Pere Goriot” by H Balzac, to tell how the excellent brains were paid by ruling class historically:

“Your annual income will be 1,200 Franc when you’re in 30’s without giving up rob of blending. You can get married with daughter from gristmill collecting rent 6,000 livre annually. If you’re lucky you can have 5,000 Franc annual incomes as a public attorney, and you can marry with mayor’s daughter. If you don’t mind to do something under table, you could become general attorney at your 40s. But allow me to remind you, there’re only 20 general attorneys in entire France, and the number of the people thirst for the jobs maybe more than 20,000, among them many clowns ready to sell out their relatives and friends. If you don’t do this; you can be a lawyer, spend 1,000 franc every month to borrow a small office; for 10 years you must keep relationship with the people, kiss any solicitor you knows rob and beg him to reward you some cases, in addition, you need to bow to every people you meet in the court as a lawyer. Tell me can you tell the names of 5 lawyers younger than 50 in Paris who have had annual income more than 50,000 Franc?”  (Vautrin said to Rastignac)

2). How the excellent brains were paid by ruling class who dominate the economy and the industries historically? 

(1).  Bonaparte Napoleon first noticed the problem and agreed to give high pay to reward his ministers so that they might match the aristocrats for respectable living, which means an income no less than 50 to 100 times of average national income.

(2).  Before industrialization, farmland was main source of wealth and income in Europe and US, and government bonds issued in countries able to manage fiscally. There’s no means that personal talent or professional skill would earn a decent income for individuals. (The only way people to remain in or ascend to high society had to go through inheritance or marriage.)

(3).  After World War I the professionals continued to increase their income and wealth by their own merit, people started to herald it as the beginning of a new era of more inclusive capitalism and trusted the trend would not revert. But what happened between 1980 and now proving that it was just a transitory deviation.

(4).  Globalization facilitates the fluidity of the commodity/service in the international market and set the cap in every economy for wages. One of the reasons the said ratio continues to go down after 1980s.

3). What will a young civil engineer choose to be? Occupational, professionals or super managers. Is it correct to borrow “meritocratic extremism” to justify the tremendous pay difference between capitalist/ rent seekers and hard-workers?

(1).   Will it be practical for engineers to follow code of engineering ethic in terms of faith, integrity, law abiding, and conduct of secrecy at the era when digital economy and artificial intelligence is about to dominate.

(2).   Engineering ethic request the engineers to take responsibility toward society, environment and the colleagues. As FIDIC maintains: To be fully effective not only must engineers constantly improve their knowledge and skills, but also society must respect the integrity and trust the judgement of members of the profession and remunerate them fairly. And it’s the brief requirement.

4). Technology improvement makes economy flourish and life better, still some people in each social class has to struggle for livelihood and survival as distribution inequality persist. Will the engineers whose expertise and knowledges be replaced by digital software and artificial intelligence fall in the category in their life time?

(1).  As technology improves, the mid income people can enjoy comfortable life far better than many of their forbearers in higher centile of income.

(2).  The engineering services need to obtain their clients’ trust and confidence, distinguishing them with the manufactured products and/or services by ordinary people. Compared with workers, clerks and other occupational, the professionals place much attention to guarantee the quality of their output and refrained from remuneration based on quantity completed especially within specific time. He thinks and acts on behalf of his client and always consider himself is unique in delivery of art, crafts and services committed to the client. 

(3).   But now that significant share of the income shaped by skill-biased and capital augmenting technical change; the professionals of conventional definition may not be in a steering position, that software, tradable programs and even AI will do much of the engineers’ job diminishing their clout in retaining work opportunities and sharing income.     

(4).   Is actually income generated by digital capital shared with certain kinds of complementary human capital, including innovators, entrepreneurs, and top executives? Among them, the super managers with winner take all mentality popular in US deserve our attention because they may pride themselves with “meritocratic extremism”, nose in the air.

(5).   The “information technology intensity of a company”-as measured by the ratio of its IT capital stock to its total stock –rises in modern engineering company demanding more return than from human capitals previously formed by employed engineers.

6). When the income generated by digital capital becomes more significant, at the same time corporate governance practices and social norms will also change allowing more rent-seeking behavior because there will be less humanity control by smart machine and AI. Will it be the same easy to and simple for professionals to follow code of engineering ethic when their sharing in total company income much less than before

5)  The professional tomorrow: Let AGI (Artificial General Intelligent) to take over and accept “Le Droit à la Paresse” (“The Right to be Lazy”) while living on Universal Basic Income dispensed by the government; or become 21st century Luddites against automatic machine? ) 

(1).  Artificial General Intelligence; Strong AI, weak AI, Open AI, generative AI, ChatGPT, Bard.

(2).   Speed over Safety: 

-   For example, Deepfakes can defame, impersonate, and spread disinformation to harass or cheat the people and things can be corrupted faster as technology advance.

-   The way tech companies monetized connectedness: by slowly warping our news feeds to optimize for engagement

-   AI-oriented Bing search engine will drive more traffic and revenue, to publishers and the advertisers.

(3).  The right to be Lazy and Universal Basic Income.

(4).  Luddites.

  

6).   Can “Engineering as a Vocation” be honored in Taiwan when material reward is meager compared with devotion paid? Can the passion, inspiration and rationality as a professional be kept as the vocation is life time choice?

2. How will Young man Start his Professional Career

1) To learn how the government operates and the economy function in the real world and the existence of political institutions, social establishment, and commercial interest groups:

(1).  Young professionals must learn the way that political institutions, social elites, and interest groups interact and influence with each other and make the government operational and the economy functioning through compromise. 

In a democracy or open society, still the elite instead of general people, will settle and conclude for government agenda, economic plans and procedural norms. And the engineers are those who command and not commanded. They will and have to contribute their intelligence during the course. 

As professionals, it's essential for the engineers to know who are the ultimate stakeholders, their feeling or wishes for something to or not to happen, and choose for the public for the most sensible and efficient way to meet their expectation according to the custom, market rules, and not the least, regulations and laws.

 

Never mind the possibility that bad side of humanity always have chances to get through in an open society and free market; and trust that the corruption and rent seeking will be decimated under long practice of liberalism and democracy. 

(2).  A young beginner has to think bigger than what he will have learnt from the textbook which present to him maybe a serene technological realm; rather, he has to learn reasoning, contention and compromise that always happening in a bustling world from the outset. 

We trust that a candid engineer with sufficient secularity knowledge will be able to save the industry and the world one day.

2) Construction business is attached to history, culture and custom of the country and society. A successful engineer has to know humanity, social behaviors, tradition and conventional wisdom; not dismiss them as redundancy soon to be discarded in the process of modernization. 

(1).  Civil engineering is always considered as sort of physical science. The employees or managers of construction companies usually need to have engineering expertise; this is especially true in developing countries where the non-mechanical knowledge could be underwhelmed in the academy and the work place.

Unlike manufacturing or IT industries, construction has its origin and background in history, culture, custom, geography, and even memory, it links to human affairs, conventional, reflective but also transformative and thus require both rational approach and sentimental interpretation. 

So, even people proselytized by modern engineering teachings must understand that the contracts and the trading system for construction can be functioning only when they conform to the traditional market behavior as it’s a collective mindset of the society. 

(2).  The professional knowledge isn't the same as common sense and experience derived in daily life by any person. It's of professionals' the pride made them distinguished from ordinary people, however, the exercise of them so as to apply the concept, principle and information learnt correctly, need professional " skill", the ability leading to success.  

World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2020 consider the most important professional " skill" consist of the ability for: complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, coordinating with others, emotional intelligence, judgement and decision making, service orientation, negotiation, and cognitive flexibility, though not to be stringently followed but are meaningful. 

(3).  An engineer sometimes may feel frustrated when he encountered resistance trying to promote top notch infrastructure projects but fails to convince the general public. However, he should realize the implementation of public works should always be kind of choices rather than direct conviction that pure scientific matter will rule.

The civil engineers should realize the efforts he rendered explaining the new idea or criticize the existing unreasonable things will not be in vain, because each time he gives reasoning, persuasion and novel idea, he can shake, crumble, and change public perception incrementally and it finally will be crystalized in his favor, the process further demonstrate the construction industry is not a yes or no scientific verdict.

On the other hand, the civil engineer should also know all the information give to public will only be considered as brute data instead of precise evidence, which can be refine or redefined as environment and situation will change from time to time.

3) Engineering is an art rather than a science: approaches to the clients, colleagues or even competitors should be more civic and in tight link with humanity and common sense.

It's easy for an engineer, to accept science and engineering fundamental in school and become a good expert afterward; but one has to grow to lead his company and industry for a successful career. In doing so, he needs to widen his visions and secure more humanities concern because the "construction" is an art rather than a science in nature.

Only because the "construction" is to serve with the human needs and its realistic business nature, the communication between the involving parties is critical. Client, colleagues, and even competitors must be linked and coordinated in a civilize way or the said cold science will result in wasted money and time.

 

However, people living in a real world should not be too sentimental and a civil engineer also should be logic and scientific for all the adaptation.

4) The corruption and rent seeking will be hard to diminish in the construction business, however, it will be reduced in an open society and free market. An engineer will only be prosperous to learn reasoning, contention and compromise in a bustling democracy. 

(1).  Definition: “Rent-seeking” is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth (Wikipedia).

(2).  An engineering decision shall not be bent or twisted facing force, power, or unjustified persuasion made by public, prestigious, client or third parties. 

 

5) The professionals don't produce, manufacture or build, they offer design solutions based on knowledge accrued through education and training. Plus, it requires good "judgement" based on experience, analysis and creativity, distinguishing them from ordinary people.

So, the professional has to exercise good "judgement" based on experience, analysis and endeavors to accomplish missions assigned to him by the project. It's the most difficult parts for the professionals because only a humble and experienced engineer believes this's an uncertain world that only through endless efforts the probability of success will possibly rise up.

6) Right altitude shall be most important for freshmen: steadfast when offered elementary skill and details, passionate with curiosity breeding innovation and creativeness leading to maturity, and trust the systems and accept the lead of the higher-up with patience.

(1).  Always the new starters don't appreciate the facts that technology advances only going through repetitive working on simple topics in the boring assignment at the beginning of their career. 

People dream about the prospect to be doyens in the field but lack the passion to learn expertise through the hard work. Sometimes they’re excusable for being exploited by the lackluster leaders in the early stage of their career. For this, they’ve to see if the passion of their colleagues, alumni and people surrounded still there, and decide whether or not themselves to stay. 

Though the defiance to the establishment, either the organizations or the higher-up usually happens, young engineers modest in their approach at workplace will be able to develop the leadership, and attain the knowledge required for professionalism and humanity. 

And it means the kind of gracious start will grant them prominent positions in the industry and help to grip the trend of market change.

(2).  Because people always want to judge the other people in simplest and quickest; engineers must try to obtain as many as possible licenses, certificates, and academic degrees in their young days.

Though success in passing examination and enduring the training may not guarantee the achievement in the career, the tendency is that the diplomat and certificates will help people a lot in a busy business world.  

7) Young engineers must understand the modern construction industry essentially is governed with human distrust: terms of contracts, laws, certificates, checks, guarantees, tests, investigations and reports, are used to instigate the antagonism between, the parties with confronting interests.

(1).  There is tendency, especially in the developed countries that the added value allocated in the name to protect the interest of ultimate owner/investor has outweighed the expense spent for the engineering and construction of the projects. 

Insouciantly, the engineers have lost their importance playing their roles and the professionalism rooted at trust and confidence between the clients and engineers dissipated while legal and financial people stepping in.

(2).  Young professionals with less confrontational mentality have to strive to turn the tide so that “non engineer’s” encroachment and domination on the industry should be reduced so as to prove that the technical world still belongs to the engineers.