R2A Blog

Both law and engineering are practical rather than theoretical activities in the sense that their ultimate purpose is to change the state of the world rather than to merely understand it. The lawyers focus on social change whilst the engineers focus on physical change. It is the power to cause change that creates the ethical […]

Disclosure: Tim Procter worked in Arup’s Melbourne office from 2008 until 2016. Shortly after Christmas a number of media outlets reported that tier one engineering consulting firm Arup had settled a major court case related to traffic forecasting services they provided for planning Brisbane’s Airport Link tunnel tollway. The Airport Link consortium sued Arup in […]

Tim Procter shares his experience as a graduate engineer developing engineering judgement and his approach to communicating this knowledge to various stakeholders. This article was originally published at Engineering Education Australia. As a graduate engineer (some years ago) moving from university to the workplace I was surprised to discover just how vast and varied engineering […]

It’s hard to believe that 2017 is coming to a close and 2018 is almost here. As part of our end of year wrap up, here are some of the highlights that we would like to share with you.

On 19 January 2017, the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change announced an independent review of Victoria’s Electricity Network Safety Framework, to be chaired by Dr Paul Grimes. On 5 May 2017, the Minister announced an expansion to the Review's Terms of Reference to include Victoria’s gas network safety framework. The interim report was […]

An introduction to the concept of Engineering Due Diligence Engineering is the business of changing things, ostensibly for the better. The change aspect is not contentious. Who decides what’s ‘better’ is the primary source of mischief. In a free society, this responsibility is morally and primarily placed on the individual, subject always to the caveat […]

Engineers play an integral role in bringing society’s wishes to fruition. As Engineers Australia’s monthly magazine create notes, we engineer ideas into reality. However, when we go about taking ideas and making them real we have responsibilities. We are obliged to consider the ideas’ risks as well as benefits. We must ensure that our engineering […]

Engineers tend to think problems through as visual concepts, particularly as a concept sketch or design. This is reflected by a lawyer trained CEO of a water authority: Now that you mention it, I have noticed that if I get between the whiteboard and my engineers they do tend to go mute. That is, for […]

In his capacity as Victorian Committee member, Tim Procter organised and MCed the recent winter seminar for Engineer Australia’s College of Leadership and Management. Daniel van Oostenwijck (VicTrack) and Clive Domone (EY) spoke on The Mobile Office – Working Anywhere, providing insight to help leaders and managers achieve high performance when leading distributed teams. Daniel […]

Scientific management appeared as a formalised concept in 1910. In its idealised form it involved observing workers performing tasks, identifying potential efficiencies that could be gained in time or effort, and implementing changes. This was followed, of course, by scientific management consultants invoicing businesses for these services. This approach (including the invoicing) seems to have […]