Engineering with wisdom

Neal Romanek talks with Naomi Climer, former president of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, about the future of work and how diversity feeds tech development

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Neal RomanekPublish date:

Apr 1, 2017Social count:

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Neal Romanek talks with Naomi Climer, former president of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, about the future of work and how diversity feeds tech development

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According to research, technology will have eliminated half the workforce in ten years. Neal Romanek talks with Naomi Climer, former president of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, about the future of work and how diversity feeds tech development.

What has your experience at the IET been like?

I have been on the board of the IET for quite a few years. I was the president for one year until September 2016, and now I will be on the Board until Sept 2017 as immediate past president.

It has been a privilege to play a senior role in the IET. It gave me the chance to make a difference and to meet an extraordinary range of people from all over the world from many different disciplines. I've been able to learn about other fields of engineering, and to try to influence people - such as politicians or teachers - to care about how engineering could change the world. And of course I've tried to champion the need for diversity in engineering.

What are the main issues being addressed at the IET right now?

The IET championed the cause of horizontal innovation' throughout 2016. The Horizontal Innovation initiative aims to drive wider transfer of technology from one sector to another.

It is a concept that all kinds of industries could benefit from, and it could give us the answers to some of our greatest challenges. I've seen innovation between broadcasting and other industries that exploit audio/visual technology such as surgery, security and many other corporate environments.

As part of the Horizontal Innovation Programme, small or medium-sized enterprises in the UK were invited to apply for funding up to the value of £35,000 to adapt and commercialise their technology to help solve a real-life healthcare challenge in the NHS.

Also, the IET's Engineer a Better World campaign, which launched in March 2015, has continued with several initiatives to encourage parents and young people, especially girls, to think about engineering as an exciting and relevant career. Initiatives have included Engineering Open House Day, Ask the Engineers and the Junior Board.

In September 2016 the IET reported from its annual Skills Survey that 91 per cent of companies agreed that employers need to provide work experience for those in education or training to improve the supply of engineers and technicians. As a result, the IET launched a new campaign: Engineering Work Experience for All' to champion the need for employers and universities to collaborate in offering quality work experience to engineering students. The campaign is designed to rally employers, universities, government and students to make a range of different, quality work experience opportunities more widespread.

Each year the IET puts on an activity at IBC in Amsterdam to help us engage with our members in the broadcast industry. In September 2016, the IET collaborated with IBC for the eighth year running to produce a special interest publication, The Best of IET and IBC. This year is IBC's 50th year, so we anticipate stepping up a gear to celebrate this milestone.

Most people would agree that we need more women in STEM fields because it's the right thing to do. But for the morally bankrupt among us, what's the business case?

You won't be surprised to hear that I think we need more women in STEM fields. In fact, we need more diversity generally. There are a couple of reasons that I think this is compelling, apart from thinking it would make STEM a better place for everyone to work

First, there's plenty of evidence - McKinsey, Gallup, World Economic Forum, et cetera - that companies, and even countries, with better diversity achieve better business results. The reasons the research gives for this include stronger innovation, better ability to connect with the full range of potential customer needs, balance between different styles leading to stronger decision making and so on.

Secondly, partly drawing on that research, it seems likely that the technical outcomes will be stronger from a diverse team of engineers. It's increasingly important that technology is designed and built with end users in mind. Ensuring that the team is representative of the whole spectrum of end users is important.

Also with the way that technology is increasingly interconnected rather than standalone, it is essential that an engineering team not only be able to design and build technology with an understanding of the users, but also that they can build relationships with many connected parties and collaborate with them for the lifetime of the technology. Although each individual has their own strengths a diverse team is better equipped to cover the wide range of skills needed to develop connected technology.

You've expressed interest in the potential of crowdsourcing, especially as it regards standards bodies. How can crowdsourcing be used more effectively?

Looking at how the world is going to change in the future, I'm interested in how our hyperconnected society is enabling completely new models for things - from business models such as Airbnb and Uber to significant crowd-sourced projects such as Wikipedia.

Although I'm sure the process would need careful finessing, I can imagine even complex standards being developed very much as Wikipedia articles are open to editing by all, peer reviewed and continuously evolving. My concern about our current standards processes is that they are qu

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