• Question: Are there any dangers involved in your job?

    Asked by kierafeighery to Ainz, Hannah, Norbert, Simon, Siu on 14 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Holly.
    • Photo: Hannah Pearlman

      Hannah Pearlman answered on 14 Jun 2015:

      Hi,
      It depends, in my every day job not really, however when I used to go and test vehicles we could be doing quite high speed on the test track and with that there does come some risk. However, I would always say that you should only do what you are comfortable with and take precautions to reduce risk as much as possible, for example I was wearing a 5-point harness at all times when testing vehicles.

    • Photo: Simon Lay

      Simon Lay answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      We spend a lot of time considering the risks of any task and where ever possible we reduce these to either zero or an acceptable level. My biggest risk normally involves getting some design wrong and damaging expensive equipment. This has happened once and it was very expensive and my team were not very popular for a while afterwards so we put a lot of effort, testing and checking in to make sure this doesn’t happen!

    • Photo: Craig Ainslie

      Craig Ainslie answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      As an aircraft engineer in the Royal Air Force there are a lot of dangers, but by planning our work and using safety equipment, accidents are very very rare.
      Day to day I work in and around live aircraft and there are a lot of dangers. We could be working high up on helicopter blades, testing a new engine or even fitting weapons. We also work with a lot of dangerous substances like aircraft fuel, oil and compressed gas. Being in the armed forces also means you might have to deal with other dangers – I have been to Afghanistan twice and our aircraft regularly come under enemy fire. Thankfully we get the best training and equipment in the world so even though we know it’s dangerous – we also know we are as prepared as we can be!

    • Photo: Siu Ng

      Siu Ng answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      Dear kierafeighery,
      No, not really in my current day-to-day job. I have actually saved lives and took steps to prevent hazards (things that may cause harm) through my work.

      For example, building a steel footbridge over a river can be dangerous and for people who work there, they could fall into the river and injure themselves. To solve the problem, I designed the footbridge in such a way that it can be built and put together in a factory (i.e. away from the construction site).

      This avoided construction workers from facing the hazards of working over the river. Through my design, I kept everyone safe, resulting in a healthier, happier and better motivated people.

    • Photo: Norbert Gogiel

      Norbert Gogiel answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      Hi!

      There is plenty of danger involved in my job. I need to design and calculate things for the spacecraft. Spacecraft go one way only and they need to be designed to be able to work in space for 100%. If you design a car, then you can fix it on the Earth, but space is one way only.

      Any engineering job is carrying a lot of danger. Civil engineers design buildings and bridges that need to work for us for 100s of years!

      Planes need to be designed so well that they need to carry people over the distance of 10000m for many years on and on. This is a danger to design a plane.

      Even cars are dangerous. You need to make sure that the fuel in the thank is safe and that the whole car is safe for driving.

Comments