Sustainability: Engineering in the Real World
Yesterday I was facilitating a workshop for the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Durham University. The purpose was to find ways to further embed Sustainability issues (social, environmental and economic) into the syllabus. I entered the room with a touch of manflu and no little trepidation – academics can be a tough audience as they, rightly, have a culture of questioning everything.
Here’s how I approached it to make sure I didn’t lose the room:
- I went straight into the first session without more than a 2 minute pre-amble. No pointless round of introductions to put everyone to sleep.
- We started with a presentation by a client, Colin Thirlaway, global compliance manager for Stanley Black & Decker. Colin made a powerfully persuasive case that, as SBD’s 20,000 product lines had to be designed for a sustainable economy, the engineers of the future will need plenty of appropriate skills and knowledge. In doing so, he killed off any doubt that this was an important subject. This made the rest of the workshop really easy.
- Next we split into groups and asked why Sustainability should be in the syllabus. This doubled down on the message that it was a critical subject – and the classic Green Jujitsu technique of getting delegates to sell sustainability to themselves.
- The following segments followed up the “Why?” with “What topics are required?”, “Where in the syllabus?” and “How should Sustainability be presented?”. For each question, delegates had to write their own ideas on Post-Its before they came together. This stops any individual dominating any group and captures the full gamut of thoughts.
As usual, it went swimmingly, although my brain got a little fugged as the Lemsip wore off towards the end. Now I’ve just got to write it all up…