Solve the right problem with Adrian Piani

Becoming an engineer was not something on the radar growing up for Adrian.

In fact, it wasn’t until year 12 that he even thought about it as a potential career.  It was through the recommendation of a career’s advisor, who looked at his skill in maths and science that put him on the path….

Extra discussions during the episode

This is a “close” copy of the words that were spoken during the Podcast, Season 4 Episode 6

It is not 100% accurate.
The guest was Adrian Piani

INTRO 

Adrian: [00:00:00] wasn’t something I’d planned from a young age. Uh, I fell into it. 

[00:00:03]I think I had the idea that engineering was a fine degree and a fine career choice, if you like, and given as good at STEM , it seemed like a natural link. 

[00:00:14] Mel or Dom: [00:00:14] Excellent. Excellent. And so you went through a university and can you remember what your first project was as an engineer? 

[00:00:21]Adrian: [00:00:21] I can’t remember my first project. I’ll give you a bit of history. I actually went to the ANU and they had just started a brand new course on systems engineering, which was a bit forward looking at how the mixture of mechanical, electrical, and computing and material science. Quite quite interesting. I got about halfway through that and realized I was never a big fan of electrical circuitry or IT and computers. 

[00:00:46] I didn’t have much background probably to finish the story, although it started well with the careers advisor giving me some good advice based on my skills. I got halfway through this course and realized it’s actually not me. I don’t really understand some of this stuff. So I was fortunate to make a wise decision, which was to transfer to the University of New England, which had an environmental engineering degree and very much a focus on water hydrology. And I really enjoyed that. So when when I came out, I was fortunate to get a job with Goulburn Murray Water, which is an irrigation authority in Victoria. And my first job was supporting the development of the Goulburn Broken catchment water quality strategy. So actually more environment than pure engineering, but fundamentally what is engineering anyway? Engineering is solving problems. And this was about solving a, a big problem – water quality across a large catchment, across , a whole river basin, if you like. And it had elements of engineering solutions, but also many other solutions that required community support or influencing the behaviors of hundreds, if not thousands of people. 

[00:02:00] So I really enjoyed that project. I was very fortunate for that to be the job I landed in half by chance and spent my first two years working with basically a community group to develop this water quality strategy. 

[00:02:16]Mel or Dom: [00:02:16] That’s a great way to start your engineering career though, because more often than not, you don’t get to have that interaction with the community. It’s more about the maths and the design and the documentation as opposed to actually being able to get out there and see the impact that you’re making from day one. 

[00:02:33]Adrian: [00:02:33] Yes. And I think it gave me exposure to how decisions can be made in a community setting or in a committee setting that decisions aren’t always uh, simple based on a mathematical equation when you’ve got communities or values involved, it’s more complicated.  I had a firsthand view of how you search for solutions in that kind of forum where it’s not you sitting at your desk solving a mathematical equation, but it’s actually trying to ask yourself what the problem is and that can take years before then settling on the required solutions. 

[00:03:09]Mel or Dom: [00:03:09] Yeah. And working for the council. So you said that was a bit of a fluke to get that job. 

[00:03:15]Adrian: [00:03:15] Yes.  as all engineering degrees require some work experience.  I was at the end of my fourth year realizing to graduate I needed 12 weeks work experience. 

[00:03:24] I didn’t have any lined up and happened to walk past the notice board in the engineering faculty and there was a, there was a small ad for the EPA in Wangaratta. I was in Northern New South Wales. I don’t know how this got up to University of New England A one pager saying they had a room for work experience person and I applied and got the gig. So I went down to Wangeratta for the 12 weeks over Christmas, and uh, they had a vacancy. So I applied for it. So it was, again, by chance. And just to round off a lot of chance in all that. Where the job was located was basically where my mum grew up, where she was from. 

[00:04:02] So I had all my relatives on her side and I lived down there for a couple of years, so that was great. 

[00:04:08] Mel or Dom: [00:04:08] Oh, that’s great. That’s a nice circle there. 

[00:04:12] Adrian: [00:04:12] Very  

[00:04:12] Mel or Dom: [00:04:12] I’m wondering if we’re going to say a theme though, 

[00:04:16] Adrian: [00:04:16] of chance. 

[00:04:17] Mel or Dom: [00:04:17] of chance chances taken a because tell us about where you are now and maybe start with how you got there. 

[00:04:26] Adrian: [00:04:26] Yeah. So 20 years later, I’m now the ACT Chief Engineer. How did I get here? So I worked for the water authority for four years, and I joined the private sector and worked in consulting for the next 15. But really what enabled me to take the jump and to take this position as the ACT Chief Engineer was, I think really my involvement with Engineers Australia. So. I was working in Victoria decided to come back to my hometown, which was Canberra in 2007. 

[00:04:59] As part of that move as a consultant, one of the things you have to have is a network. You know, you have to get to know people. And I got an opportunity to join EA and join one of our local committees here in Canberra. And I thought that would be a, that would be a good way to make people, so I joined the Sustainable Engineering Society, the Canberra chapter, if you like. not really knowing what I was doing, what it was about, but I thought, yeah, it would be good for networking, but also good as professional development. So that was in 2007 and it really started my journey of involvement with EA. 

[00:05:33] I’ve had a fair involvement over the years and what it made me do was think about our profession more broadly than just my day to day job. It’s exposed me to fascinating people with passion and industry issues . It forces you to think about industry issues and what are we trying to achieve? 

[00:05:54] Mel or Dom: [00:05:54] So what are you doing in your role then? 

[00:05:58] Adrian: [00:05:58] So the ACT Chief Engineer, I’ve been in the role now for a year. The two main things that the role requires is to provide advice to government on infrastructure and also to develop a workforce plan for engineers in the ACT government. So that’s something I’ve been working on, develop the framework, developed the draft re-approval and that’s been a really enjoyable experience and a workforce plan, it’s really talking about capability and capacity of our engineering workforce. And when you start to think about that, there’s  quite some fundamental questions you have to ask yourself. What’s the value that engineers provide? What skills do we need to provide that value? What is the future gonna look like? 

[00:06:46] So we can’t just ask ourselves, what do we need to do today? Really, if we’re talking about workforce planning we’re asking ourselves where do we need to be in five or 10 years? So it does require you to ask some interesting questions. 

[00:06:59]Mel or Dom: [00:06:59] I was just wondering, is it a fixed term role, like you’re in the role for, you know, two, four years, or is it until you quit or you get fired or something like that? 

[00:07:08] Adrian: [00:07:08] Exactly the latter. So  it’s a position in government. I guess there’s other positions which might be statutory or have a fixed term.  

[00:07:16] Mel or Dom: [00:07:16] cause you can really then set a goal and then stay there to see it through. I was, the reason I was asking, I was worried that you would sort of set a goal and then you roll out into all four years and then you don’t get to see your plan come to life. 

[00:07:30] Adrian: [00:07:30] That’s true. I have the ability to see it through, and also I think I’m actually the first ACT Chief Engineer, so I need to set the foundation for the future as well. 

[00:07:39]Mel or Dom: [00:07:39] And so as part of that role, you were saying , it also leads into government liaison. 

[00:07:45]Adrian: [00:07:45] Yes  

[00:07:46] Mel or Dom: [00:07:46] how are you finding that? is it helping to make change come faster than it would normally. 

[00:07:52] Adrian: [00:07:52] I think fundamentally, I say there’s value with engineers or people with engineering skill being at the table when decisions are being made. And I think the profession needs to take this on more.  I think that engineers sometimes view themselves or we are viewed as the people at the end of the pipe that the design the solution once the big decisions been made. 

[00:08:13] But I believe engineers should be all the way through the decision making process and it’s critical to have people with technical knowledge and just the wisdom built over many years that can provide advice at the table when the decisions are being made. All professions have a valuable contribution. 

[00:08:28] If we have diversity in views, different professions are sitting around the table with our different skillsets. Providing that valuable input it makes for better decisions. So just the fact that governments are realizing the value of that STEM skill and having it there at the table, I think is a good thing. 

MID ROLL 

[00:08:46]when I thought about what’s the role of an engineer, fundamentally the role of an engineer is to solve problems, that’s not quite enough cause we need to be solving the right problems. And why are we solving problems? I think we’re solving problems to improve the quality of our lives, but we can’t do that at the expense of the environment. And I think we’ve done a little bit of that, and I think our environment is generally still declining. 

[00:09:09] So we need to find a way to make our quality of life better, but at the same time, improving environmental outcomes. So for me, that’s our greatest challenge. 

[00:09:18]Mel or Dom: [00:09:18] It is always a concern cause  society as a whole sort of, in a crass way, so we want the stuff, but we’re not willing to forgo it for the sake of the environment. It’s really a case of you can’t have both, and it’s getting very hard to adapt and then engineer because of what we’re doing 

[00:09:37]Adrian: [00:09:37] So I think it’s things like doing more with less across the spectrum. So if we’ve got food and fiber production in terms of water, let’s double our production from half the water. That’s the great challenge. So how would we do that? Engineering can play it’s part in supporting that? Or how can we heat the homes of 25 million people, but do it with half the energy. 

[00:10:00] Mel or Dom: [00:10:00] Exactly. Yeah. So I was setting these big curly challenges that will benefit the environment. So taking the future of the environment into consideration. Are people actually considering it though? 

[00:10:12] Adrian: [00:10:12] I think so. I, When I think about engineering three pillars as a design consultant, probably three pillars that are fundamental to the design challenge and they are quality, safety and the environment. Every design house has a quality system , a safety system and environmental system and they are the pillars of what we do. So it’s there. The question then is how upfront is it in our decision making and what’s our ability to influence outcomes? So I suspect our ability to influence outcomes is when we’re asking the questions at the start of the process. It’s not once someone’s decided that we need a new six-lane bridge, probably a bit late then, and then we’re just starting to look at materials use in energy and water impacts and impacts on the local environment, which are all good things to do. 

[00:11:01] But probably the biggest impact is when we first ask ourselves what the problem is and what’s the solution, and the solution might not be the six lane road, and that’s okay. 

[00:11:11]Mel or Dom: [00:11:11] I think as engineers we need to be better salespeople as well. When those decisions are being made we don’t put our case forward well enough. we should be saying, why are you looking at a six lane road? I think we are getting better than that. Cause I honestly believe that if you spoke to any engineer. The environmental implications of what they do weigh very heavily on their shoulders.  it’s something like that they really hold dear to their designs and their engineering. 

[00:11:37] But I think that the hardest part is that engineers are very good at it, giving the clients what they want. Do you think there are some solutions that we could look to or head towards  in regards to these challenges? 

[00:11:49]Adrian: [00:11:49] Certainly is. I think the digital innovation piece and big data’s got some interesting outcomes. Engineering can be sometimes a rule of thumb exercise where don’t know the science behind some of the fundamental decisions we need to make, but we have a rule of thumb and we know if we apply it we’ll get the outcome we need. The bridge stands up or we get enough water to the farm gate. There‘s just rules of thumb. so I think big data and data analytics and maybe computational power as well, enable us to revisit some of our rules of thumb. And  so instead of look on I, the answers my equation that I’m going to use to design this a pipe network. 

[00:12:33] I know at some stage you’ve got to times it by two. That’s my rule of thumb. It gives me the safety factor I need. And it’s worked for the last 50 years. And it’s tried and true. I think now with big data and data analytics, we can go back and look at that rule of thumb and analyze it, pick it apart, and find out, you know what, maybe we can go with 1.3 now, which means my pipe doesn’t have to be that big, or I don’t need to use  that section of concrete or truss or member, I can make it a bit smaller and still be safe. I think that’s like fundamental engineering. It’s probably not that sexy or innovative in a way. It’s just doing our jobs very well. And I think all of us are great engineers. 

[00:13:08] Really, what are we challenged by? Doing our job the best we can. And if we can find a way to do it quicker, smarter, cheaper, stronger, then we’re always up for that challenge. 

[00:13:18]Mel or Dom: [00:13:18] what you were saying about engineers need to consider the environment, I’m finding that it comes back to that conversation that you were having about being at the table and hoping to get to the table sooner so you don’t have to be so reactive. How do we ensure that we are evolving in an environmentally friendly way? 

[00:13:38] Adrian: [00:13:38] Yes, it’s a good question. Fundamentally engineer’s or any anyone proposing solutions to complex problems needs to understand the impacts of what they’re proposing. Yeah, that’s, that’s fundamentally it. And if you don’t understand that what you’re doing has an impact over here, then you can’t manage for it. the environment doesn’t have a voice,  it’s not obvious sometimes when the damage is done. And if you’re not trained, you wouldn’t see it. So I suspect part of it is just making those connections more obvious. Or, using the skills of environmental science or indeed environmental engineering to help understand the impacts that you’re going to have. 

[00:14:14]You know, there’s a couple of really simple rules that I’ve picked up in university. They’re called Commoner’s Four Laws of Ecology. And they’re quite simple, but they’re quite fundamental too. And I won’t be able to remember all four, but one of them is, everything’s connected to everything else. 

[00:14:31] So that you’ve got to understand that you take water from a river that’s not without consequences. You dig something up out of the ground and disturbed that natural environment, then that’s not without consequences. You create lots of plastic and that gets back into the environment. 

[00:14:44] That’s not without consequence. So really trying to sit back sometimes and ask yourself, what are the potential impacts of what I’m about to design and what could I do to minimize that impact? Or even not everyone can know everything. Who would I ask to help me understand what those impacts are? 

[00:15:03] Mel or Dom: [00:15:03] Who else do I need at that table? 

[00:15:05]Adrian: [00:15:05] Yeah. It’s a hard one ever really a precise answer, right? There is no precise answer. There’s many, many thousands of decisions we make, thousands of design solutions, thousands of innovations that will all come together to support this goal.  

[00:15:19] Mel or Dom: [00:15:19] And also the awareness , you might think you’re doing good now, but in 50 years time you go, Oh shit, I can’t believe somebody thought that was a good idea 50 years ago. And so priorities change for society 

[00:15:32]Adrian: [00:15:32] well, if we take the energy network a hundred years ago, coal was the great way to solve the problem. And it was, and so it’s not that they made a mistake back then , it’s just that I think we find many times in human development …. earth has only got a certain amount of capacity to take what we’re putting into it, and we just eat up that capacity. 

[00:15:49] And then we go, Oh, we’ve got to stop doing that. we can’t have all the tanneries in the river putting all their chemicals into the river cause we can’t drink it anymore. All the fish die. So we’ve got to stop that. I mean, having one was okay, but when we had 10 and that was too much. So the way I think it’s just these environmental problems, sometimes it’s just we keep  adding, adding to the capacity of the environmental system. 

[00:16:09] And then we take a step back and right, well, we can’t do that anymore. So  

[00:16:13] what can  

[00:16:13] we do? 

[00:16:14] Mel or Dom: [00:16:14] Yeah,  it’s mostly cause it’s all just comes down to equilibrium as far as I’m concerned, as you were saying before, you do something over here and it has repercussions over there and everything’s always trying to get back into balance. 

[00:16:26] And unfortunately, when we pushed too hard in one direction then it’s going to push hard in the other direction as well. So it’s going to be some very tough times ahead, particularly from an environmental perspective, cause I was listening to another podcast today w h ere they we’re to about that way. 

[00:16:40] The biggest problem is that a lot of people just gloss over the problems at the moment because they’re not visible. And it’s not until they become the norm, like the problems with Bush fires. The problem with extreme weather that we all start going, Oh no, what do we do? And, but then. 

[00:16:57] It’s too late. It’s going to take so long to try and get that equilibrium back that it’s a really hard problem to solve because people like to see that tangible problem upfront that they can go in and go, Oh, okay. I see what you mean now. Yeah. That is a problem, isn’t it? 

[00:17:11] Adrian: [00:17:11] Yes. Some of the problems are they grow slowly. Some of them are big tipping points, but I think a lot of them are just, we wake up one day and go, Oh, how did we get here? That’s not so good. But took a hundred years to do it, and you can’t fix it in five or 10 years. 

[00:17:27]Mel or Dom: [00:17:27] No, exactly. It needs a little decision that will have a massive  

[00:17:31] Adrian: [00:17:31] Yep,  

[00:17:32] Mel or Dom: [00:17:32] So yeah, over time. Yeah.  

[00:17:35]so what are your thoughts on the future of engineering? 

[00:17:37]Adrian: [00:17:37] The future is digital. So very wise person once said to me, look, Adrian, I don’t know what horse is going to win the race tomorrow, but I bet you 10 years time, life will be more digital than it is now. So 

[00:17:48] Mel or Dom: [00:17:48] Yeah, 

[00:17:49] Adrian: [00:17:49] not a. Not a bad way to look at it. So it’s true. I think, so our lives will be more digital. 

[00:17:54] So how engineering rides that digital wave, and I sort of touched on it a bit before, with data analytics and really uses the potential of data to make better decisions. 

[00:18:05]Mel or Dom: [00:18:05] And where do you think that leaves us as engineers in that picture as well? Like the human perspective. 

[00:18:11] Adrian: [00:18:11] The artificial intelligence conversations an interesting one, that’s not one I profess to be an expert in. You know, some professions are wondering whether they’ll exist in 10 years because they’ll be taken over by machine learning or AI. I think potentially what could happen is some of the simpler or calculations or designs that can be replicated over and over again will be taken up by AI. 

[00:18:34] But it’s really the human problem solving probably goes back to where we started this conversation of having 20 people around a room with all their different values and viewpoints and trying to get that together to get the solution to the complex problem. And I think that’s a fact. AI might be an advantage to us because we spend less time doing the computation and more time thinking about the real problem. 

[00:18:58] So it would seem one of our trends or challenges is managing systems. Yeah. And so engineering is probably an applied science that’s really been about getting down to the nitty gritty to solve some very particular problems like the size of the bolt or the strength of the concrete to build back up to this great structure we need. 

[00:19:21] I sense there’s been a bit of a trend over the last, say 20 years or so, or 30 years about more systems thinking with engineering. And the first degree I started at ANU was a systems engineering course. So thinking about things as systems and systems within systems. And I’ve been working with ANU here locally looking to create a new environmental engineering degree, which I think they, they’ve got this focus or idea about the city as a system, which I’m really interested to see how they create an engineering degree that not only has that sort of technical foundations that we need. But also brings in that holistic systems problem solving view or skillset. 

[00:20:02]Mel or Dom: [00:20:02] Very exciting space. But back to what Dom was saying, what sort of advice would you give to people who are just starting out in engineering. 

[00:20:11] Adrian: [00:20:11] so solve the right problem. As a graduate, yes, you’ve got to learn the ropes and you’ve got to solve the problem in front of you and learn your technical skills. But hopefully always have in the back of your mind that you should be wanting to grow into a position where you know how to solve the right problem. 

[00:20:26] Ask yourself, am I solving the right problem? Don’t wait for someone to tell you what the problem or solution is. And be part of the conversation, which is, again, what I learned through my involvement with EA was to be part of the conversation. And I’ll, I’ll go back to my idea that in the first three, four, five years of your career, try and get as much diverse experiences as you can as a base for your future career. 

[00:20:51]Mel or Dom: [00:20:51] I like how you’ve tied everything back to a little bit of your career, even from day one, how you had such community involvement, you’re at the table and then you’ve moved around and stuff. It, it really does tie in with your history of where you’re at. But to finish up out of everything in the whole entire world, what is a piece of engineering that has impressed you. 

[00:21:11]Adrian: [00:21:11] Okay, cool. it is a great question. the impressive engineering is something called the Dethridge wheel. Uh, Dethridge? Yes. Uh, you can Google Detherage, uh, invented by Mr Dethridge in 1910. If you go to the irrigation areas of Australia, Mildura, Sheperton, Griffith they would have very common, they were everywhere. Basically a big wheel that was used to meter water. It‘s a metal wheel with fins and it sat within a concrete emplacement and you know, the quicker it rotated. The more water went through it, and if you counted the rotations, then you got an estimate or a measurement of water flow. And so measuring the water flow, getting a measurement of water was fundamental to how we’ve managed irrigation in Australia. 

[00:21:58] And it’s enabled us to do things like the Murray darling basin plan, which we couldn’t have ever done if we just didn’t do the basic thing of measuring water and why I’ve chosen this one was it was invented in 1910 we basically used it for a hundred years. It was fit for purpose. It could be tweaked and maintained in the field. 

[00:22:17] Wasn’t high tech, but did its job.   

[00:22:19] Mel or Dom: [00:22:19] It sits in a river and measures the flow and allows you to calculate how much water passing 

[00:22:24] Adrian: [00:22:24] I’ll say it sits in a channel. A river’s too big of a structure for this poor Dethridge Wheel, but at every farmer’s fence, if you like, when the water channel came to the fence, there was this Dethridge Wheel turning. And that’s how we measured water. It was reasonably accurate. 

[00:22:41] If we looked after it. and now, now it’s actually been replaced by some great Australian technology, which is really fantastic called the Rubicon, system but it’s really an automated computerized system that manages the flow of water in our irrigation channels automatically. 

[00:22:57] Whereas again, for the last hundred years, we did it manually. And Australia is really the forefront of creating great technology to manage water distribution in an irrigation setting. 

[00:23:07]Mel or Dom: [00:23:07] So for the engineer you admire, is that a, it’s a bit of a package deal in regards to Mr Deathridge? 

[00:23:14] Adrian: [00:23:14] No, never, never met him, obviously. Uh, no, I’ve gone for Dr Alan Finkel. Our Australia’s chief scientist is actually an engineer. I think he’s a very inspiring person. And talking about engineers getting a seat at the decision making table , he’s a person that as our chief scientist is advising the highest levels of government on really significant policy issues, including energy and his recent work on hydrogen is fantastic. And I think just demonstrates the value of having someone with an engineering and technical background providing policy advice. The way, the way we think, the way we tackle problems. And I just as part of this, I’ve got a quote from Dr  Finkle, which I think is fantastic and really sums up engineering for me. So I use it all the time. So he’s asking the question, what is engineering? And he said, engineering is the art of optimization. You can’t build a bridge based on the pursuit of perfection. That would be too expensive. 

[00:24:18] You can’t build a bridge based on compromise that would result in failure. Instead, what you can and must do is build a bridge by optimizing all of the variables. So it’s my favorite engineering quote. Um, I really, really summed up all of the engineer in a way. So I encourage people to use it. I use it all the time. 

[00:24:41]Mel or Dom: [00:24:41] Oh, thank you so much for bringing that to our attention. We haven’t had Alan Finkel mentioned either. No! Thanks for that. 

[00:24:48]Adrian: [00:24:48] Look, I’ve worked with a lot of great engineers. Every design challenge  is a chance for innovation. The reason we have engineers is because it isn’t standard. The aren’t many standard problems out there. So every time we design a new road or a bridge or a building it’s a different challenge. 

[00:25:05] And so I’ve worked with lots of great engineers that have found innovative ways to solve it. Small scale or big scale problems.  I tip my hat to all of them, but I thought, uh, our Chief Scientist is that person that can really influence policies. quite an achievement. 

[00:25:20] Mel or Dom: [00:25:20] Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We really loved having you with us. Thanks for that. It was great speaking with you. 

[00:25:27]Adrian: [00:25:27] Always great to talk about the grand profession of engineering and supporting it’s stature in a way. I think we all have to do that. We have to  get out there, talk about engineering, talk it up. it’s been a great career for me. It provides great opportunities. I think it is a profession that truly, at the end of the day, you say, why am I here? 

[00:25:45] And that’s to help communities or help our quality of life.  I think we’re quite special in that way. So well done to all of us. 

[00:25:53] Mel or Dom: [00:25:53] And that’s why it’s good as well for all engineers out there this stop and have a look back at all the wonderful things they’ve done, because I think a lot of us forget about it, and I’m always good to take an opportunity to reflect on all the excellent work that we’ve done over the years.  

OUTRO 

And thank you for listening to another great episode of engineering heroes as we present the new Dawn of engineering challenges for Engineers Australia. You can view our show notes or get more information about our podcast by visiting our website, www.engineeringheroes.com.edu. If you’ve enjoyed today’s show, all we need you to do is to go and tell someone. 

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