I used to live in dread of the day I would be found out for the fraud I was. Here I was, a structural engineer, and yet I knew I was just a CAD technician who knew how to operate steel beam software. Everyone else knew what the software inputs meant, or so I thought. Everyone else understood what lateral torsional buckling is, and why it matters. Everyone else could understand what the computer printout meant, while to me it looked like gobbledegook.
But then I went to a training day with engineers from all over our large structural consultancy, and I realised that almost everyone in the room was in the same boat. Whenever the tutor asked questions he assumed everyone would know the answers to, only one hand went up!
Which is when I started picking up my engineering books and started to study. As a junior engineer, I realised that if I could bottom out a few structural principles, I would always be the smartest in the room.
Let's be honest with one-another here. No-one is going to hear what you think right now, or look over your shoulder at what you are reading, and no-one is going to judge you for it. So let's be honest: I think you're probably faking it too.
If we're being honest, you probably:
- don't get all the gobbledegook from the computer printout - but you worry that it might be wrong in a subtle way you haven't appreciated.
- live in fear of being found out, of being exposed
- avoid being asked questions, in case you don't know the answer
- avoid asking questions in case you are exposed as not knowing what you feel you ought to know.
- feel that everyone else knows the secret, and just aren't telling you
- hate to go to site because you might get questions from a builder - and you won't be able to explain to them why this beam is so apparently over designed.
- Have to turn down friends and family who ask you for beam calculations because you're afraid you might mess it up
But what if I told you that you can know, and you can understand, and you will be able to justify your work, and check the work of others, and even understand that computer printout?
What if there was a way to quickly learn and understand steel beam design that would give you the easy formulas and techniques to have the answers at your fingertips?
If that was a reality, you could walk onto building sites with pride, knowing you can justify the steelwork you have designed. You could give advice to junior engineers and check their work, making yourself look good in the process. You would fear no questions from colleagues or boss, and rather than hide in fear of being found out, begin to let your talents shine forth.
But I know what you're thinking. Structural engineering takes a three or four year degree, and then you need to understand impenetrable Eurocodes, and having done that you need to be a maths wiz to even do the calculations the books tell you to do. You've been told that you need to be chartered or to have passed the IStructE exam. And you definitely need to know what Lateral Torsional Buckling is.
Well,
what if I told you that there was a method for beam design that doesn't use any difficult maths, and is easy to learn, takes very little time to do, and uses only pen and paper?
What if I told you that when I do steel beam calculations I just read off tables that take lateral torsional buckling already into account, so that I can almost ignore it?
When I got made redundant from a large consulting engineers, I set up my own consultancy and for the first few years I almost exclusively did steel calculations. Since I had no software, I had to be clever about it, and in the end
I developed a method that takes minutes, produces the right answer every single time, and all without software or complicated maths.
I've worked for many of the region's best known structural engineering consultancies, and produced work for many of the UK's largest house builders, such as Davidsons, Millar Homes, and Bellways. Whilst I am now a chartered engineer with many years of experience under my belt, I began to use this method when I was a junior engineer. The method is so simple and easy to understand that you will look back in a year's time and wonder what all the fuss was about!
