Mechanical design, like most other sorts of design, starts with a recognition of a need or an opportunity which requires something (a “new device”) to be made in order to get the benefits that the situation requires or offers.  The new device may be either stereotypical, ie a new version of a pre-existing entity, or a totally new concept – this is always the biggest divide in any form of design.

The stages of design are:

• defining the need or opportunity;
• developing a concept which will satisfy this;
• developing a physical system which will satisfy this;
• attending to all the zillions of details;
• prototype building, development and trials; and
• any re-design required to suit production.

Numerous factors need to be considered:

• market appeal, including appearance, sociological and ecological aspects;
• costs;
• intellectual property rights of others, and protection for the in-house new device;
• the availability of materials of construction and manufacturing processes;
• the availability of adequate servicing;
• safety, especially in fault states or in the hands of inept operators;
• operator skills and training;
• what the competition is doing;
• delivery times; and, ultimately,

Unless all these things are adequately addressed at the design stage, it will all end in tears.  Either:

• the new device will not achieve its performance targets, if in fact it works at all;
• the new device will itself fail, ie break, buckle, burst, etc;
• the new device will be too expensive to own and operate, and will lose market appeal, together with the corporate image of its makers;
• it will lead to lawsuits from accidents and/or intellectual property infringements;
• the maker company will go broke – remember the Leyland P76, a quite good car but not what the market wanted at the time.

All the above looks like pretty dry stuff and not really the stuff of cartoons, whereas from a designer’s point of view, design can actually be good fun and quite rewarding.  The truth also is, though, that designers need to be almost infinitely far-sighted in relation to what can go wrong in the most bizarre situations.  They are surrounded by lots of smart arses alecs, who have never had an original idea of their own, who are instantly ready to criticise anything which has been brought into existence by someone else or, with the benefit of hindsight, point out why a failure or accident should have been not only foreseen, but avoided at the design stage, as they hand one a Statement of Claim.

If one would like to see a lighter side of mechanical design, one could watch a few episodes of Top Gear, where the Mad Three try to develop or modify vehicles or put them to extreme or unintended uses.  How they survive some of their escapades is a mystery.

The most common lines list Electrical Engineering as “The branch of engineering that deals with the technology of electricity, especially the design and application of circuitry and equipment for power generation and distribution, machine control, and communications.”

The reality is that Electrical Engineers are people who live in a world of jargon that nobody else understands. A situation where rules are many but mistakes can be few. A place where metaphor and simile are required to allow others to comprehend and, despite that fact that electricity lights the world and drives most forms of innovation, a discipline that you can’t see or smell. Then there is the downside…It has a desire to kill you if you touch it.

Legal cases involving construction situations are becoming more and more complex. The construction world is changing and not being lauded for its regulation and quality control. Legal cases arise with confusing evidence and varied accounts, based on varying factual information.
So how do we know what actually happened? Did we observe it and then remember it? Did we take a photograph or make a recording? Even with these tools the interpretation of what happened is left to our own personal take and interpretation.
So how do we deal with a legal case involving a construction trade where there is an allegation that one or more parties have caused damage or impacted someone. The tradie or contractor may be good at what they do but bad at recording it. When the proverbial hits the fan, the lawyers are left with a bamboozled tradie or contractor defendant with no records and literally just a memory of what happened.
The plaintiff will have their own version of events too, based on their memory or a photo they may have taken before they thought it might be relevant in a legal case. If they record events while it is happening that is better, but how much do they understand about the technicalities of what they are viewing?
In legal cases involving construction trade activities that have impacted others, there is often a need to re-construct events out of the back story of the events. Memories fade, photos have different meanings, battle lines diminish objectivity.
If only we could wind back time and like a video , replay it.
This article addresses this problem. A series of research methods are used that combine and are designed to re-construct events in these situations and restore a body of evidence that is potentially enlightening to the case and the court.
The primary research tool is called the Case Study. The case study is an analysis of a specific field of activity, usually bounded by time and space (or location). Events are played out (like on a sporting field) in a logical order based on certain rules and activity sequences.
When we recount these events ( through memory) within this playing field they will either fit into the picture or not, like a jig saw puzzle. An activity might not fit into the logic of the other activities or might not fit into the location or time of day. If constructed properly, case studies have a high level of ‘self-validation’ if created based on these principles and combined with other methods.
So when your lawyer is looking dumfounded at your lack of evidence because you are a great tradie but a bad administrator and recorder of events, there is hope yet.

Dr Jonathan Drane
Expert Witness Complex Construction and Legal Cases