The text presented here is not precisely as published by OUP, but modifications are minor. Illustrations are another matter. Where images used in the original book were not my copyright, I have in most cases been able to substitute links to coloured images on the web.
When this text was submitted as part of a PhD thesis in 1996, the Notes were greatly extended. Most readers may prefer to ignore them. They have been collected at the end of each chapter, with internal links leading to them and back to the text. They are a mixture of: simple page references; additional examples or quotations to justify generalisations; and some afterthoughts.
After discussing such advanced ideas, in such elevated company, it may be necessary to bring readers down to earth again. Obviously, not all of us are destined to become 'master builders' in the Nervi style or senior partners in international consulting firms. Newly graduated engineers are still at that phase of life when time appears to pass relatively slowly: to be involved on a single project for six months or two years may seem extremely dull. The excitement of the creation of overall form for large projects occupies only a brief space of time and is usually handled by senior engineers. Much of the work of younger engineers is concerned with fairly routine detail, often of a non-computational nature, such as writing specifications and liaison on detail with architects and services engineers.
However, given this sensible perspective there is much that new graduates can do. The design of detail can be most important. Bright ideas for overall structural form sometimes have to be abandoned when it is found to be impossible to devise the details (e.g. connections) implied by the overall scheme. Because details are less standardized than overall forms there is a lack of generally applicable theories for their analysis. They often involve a three-dimensional stress system and cannot be analyzed realistically by the simpler theories. Consequently they may demand more creativity and understanding than a routine overall form.
Even when graduates find themselves a small part of a large organization, routine liaison with mechanical and other engineers and with architects at the same level, and the nature and variability of the directives that come down from above, will bring them face-to-face with the problems of politics, communication and design methods which have been discussed in this book.
It is also quite possible for fresh graduates, after a few years' practice, to become involved in collaboration with architects on the design of smaller structures, either as principals or as employees of small consulting firms. Smaller structures such as factories, churches, footbridges and even houses can offer interesting challenges. The size of a structure is no measure of the complexity or the amount of design work involved, or of the depth of understanding of fundamental concepts which may be applied.
At whatever level younger engineers are able to operate they should find their work more interesting and meaningful if they are able to follow the interplay of the various factors which influence the design of structures, even when they themselves are not directly involved.
Although the realities of the employment market do not always permit it, young engineers should attempt, if they find they are not allowed to make an intelligent contribution to the process, to find work in a more enlightened organization (perhaps their own!).
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