I spent a long career in Construction and Construction Management. Worked with Owners in hiring many design firms as hiring my own.
30 years back the owner of a design firm complained to me that students graduating from the design fields were coming to him as new hires without the basics in materials, specifications, detailing and the actual skill sets that would fill their first ten years on the boards and CAD screens — they all wanted to be lead designers from day one.
The university faculty had quit teaching the basics, telling the student, you will get that from your first employer, you need to learn the majesty of design.
That’s utterly horrifying!
My schools ensured I had the vitals, but instilled a need for aesthetics. Strong and safe always were first, but how it looked to the public also mattered.
I went a path far removed from my first infatuation, but I do love a beautiful piece of what I term “mobility art”.
I was only impressed by ONE instructor in that college, and he was despised by his “peers” because he had an accent. He is, to this day, the smartest man I have ever met.
Told my new engineers that in rough terms the first 2 or so years is for trade craft, up to about 10 years is becoming a professional and maybe some supervision of others, next 10 is honing the craft and moving up, next 10 is creation and inventing, the last 10 is passing the torch more-or-less.
Just learning how to write a good letter, proposal or report is a critical skill and a youngster needs to write a whole lot of them and get beat up a lot by someone who knows how to do all of it.
Had one prof that tried to teach us trade craft and was a stickler but he was too far removed from current industry practice and certainly not company specific.
I always thought the truss on the FIU bridge was oddly irregular and wondered what is wrong with a conventional truss? Moreover, what is wrong with any one of a number of standard steel through truss are cambered arch pedestrian bridges. It just isn’t that complicated. This one they designed didn’t even support the dead load. Sheesh!