Reply to Comment on the First National Congress of Civil Engineers

Your Ref: Our Ref: RJCW/HMR Date 26th January 1982

Please ask for Mr Wren

D Haldane, Esq.,

Department of Civil Engineering,

Heriot-Watt University,

Riccarton,

Edinburgh,

Scotland.

Dear Mr Haldane,

Thank you for your letter of 4th January 1982 referring to the first

National Congress of Civil Engineers to be held in Edinburgh this year.

In reply, I would like to consider each of your two questions separately.

a. What are the main difficulties in achieving an adequate standard of design education?

i) Time. The biggest problem that we have within engineering of all types is that of lack of time to include all that is required to adequately educate the graduate engineer. There are many proposals to increase the basic degree course from three years to four years to allow for the complexities of teaching modern engineering. Most of the problems that we encounter, as shown below could be resolved more easily if we had more time available to us.