Editorial

This Editorial is in the form of an Opinion Piece in which I want to emphasise the importance of increasing international understanding and broadening vistas for education, training and upskilling. The journal is one way we do this. In this issue, we have learned papers on a range of topics from research and design teams in China, Japan, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands and the United States.

High-speed communication links mean that most people are much more aware of the different attitudes and courses of development in other countries. The term – global village – has found root over recent years. Of course, some people, however urgent matters may be, prefer to think in more nationalist terms. Now we have almost 200 countries dealing with COVID 19 in varying ways. Sustainable development requires us all to interchange ideas and put action programmes into practice. Both issues require clear but quick coordinated responses to the challenges they set us and demand cooperation between nations.

Younger generations travel much more extensively until now than in the 1950s–1960s have shown an open approach in evaluating how other countries do things. Politicians are less keen to do this and prefer often to remain blinkered as they are concerned not to be compared unfavourably with the actions of other foreign governments. However, COVID 19 is exposing how well or not countries deal with such an event as it can cause deaths of not only people but also economies. One can learn a lot by studying individual differences. Some countries, for example, were quick to respond to COVID 19 and some were measuring and testing immediately but others not. Some countries enforce rules readily but others are reluctant to do so.

In Germany, there are more regulations than many other countries and their people and organisations happily obey these. When no traffic is flowing past you, one can still be apprehended for crossing the clear road when the signal is red, for example. There is a focus on getting good value even if costs are a little higher. There is a long-term vision. The governance across the country via the Länder is more even than in the UK where local authorities are more tightly controlled by the central government. This equality is true for the education system too and this results in a better overall skills level. Plumbers and builders are as highly educated as scientists. In the UK, there are fragmented pools of highly skilled and lowly skilled workers. The UK is very liberal and reluctant to over govern. This seems attractive but there are downsides to this too especially in times of crisis which is not at wartime level.

The Philips lecture given at the Royal Society on 5 October in 1989 by Professor Hilsum in which he made a comparison between Japan, Europe and America in terms of the electronics and chemical industries. Money earned is used to pay the salaries, depreciation costs and the residual value gives a gross profit. The average profit aimed for in Europe at that time in those industries was 5% and in Japan 15%, whereas in the UK, it was more like 17%.

Profit margins in construction are much less than in many other industries. Major building contractors on the Continent operate with net profits in the order of 1–5% whereas in Britain profit margins are tighter. This demand for a quick return is also shown when payback periods of under 5 years are requested for most innovative projects in the UK whereas novel energy conservation projects for buildings in America or Germany will be evaluated using a payback period of 15–20 years. Britons like high profits and a quick financial return. Is this because our financial institutions stipulate these conditions; is it a lack of long-term vision or is it just greed?

In a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts Shichi Saba in 1989 spoke of the Japanese style of doing business. He began by pointing out that the concepts of capitalism and modern industry were introduced into Japan about 120 years ago and influenced by the West. Since World War II, there has been an equalisation throughout Japanese society so that now a company president only earns about 7.5 times the salary of a new university graduate. Western cultures are generally characterised by a belief in individualism and generally welcome the guidance of strong leaders. In contrast, the Japanese find it difficult to accept strong individuals and Japan has more of a group-oriented society that prefers working through quality-based consensus. This approach has reshaped the capitalist pattern inherited from the West so that it has evolved into a framework for human-oriented economic activity. People in the West place emphasis in their lives around themselves and their own families and communities while their work is primarily a means of receiving financial remuneration. In Japan, the firm is just as important as other group affiliations and represents one of the basic social group situations in which real life is lived. Staff turnover is low and the employees are really the true owners of the companies so that a sale of that company is highly unlikely.

There have been major differences between the approach of the Japanese and Western countries to post-war growth. In Japan, substantial efforts have been devoted to incorporating the results of market research into product development programmes. Another difference is the tremendous emphasis given to research and education. Research expenditure is about 3% of the Gross National Product but in the UK, it is around 1.7% and only aiming to be 2.4% by 2024.

In the UK, there are more graduates from science than from engineering departments whereas in Japan, the opposite is true. Care is needed in comparing statistics because the word engineer has a wider meaning in other countries. In the building industry architects, surveyors and builders are referred to as engineers in Japan and mainland Europe; they are all professions that involve ingenuity (cf ingenieur and engineer).

McCormick (1988) quotes work which attributes the success of America, Germany and Japan to their adoption of mass production methods and corporate forms of managerial coordination. In contrast, Britain has retained the characteristics of family capitalism and competition which has resulted in a depressed demand for educational routes to senior management. By 1990, Germany had given degree granting powers to the Technische Hochschulen and thereby giving them parity with the traditional university and so recognising engineering education at the highest level.

The German system gives an educational pathway which prepares students with competence to practice whereas in Britain and Japan, the educational qualifications only indicate a readiness to practice. In Britain, competence has been recognised by membership of a professional institution and since there are several of these in engineering, there is a much more heterogeneous variety among British engineers compared to our counterparts in Europe. Many in the UK believe we should follow the German model so as we have a better balance between the more academic learning in universities and the more practical hands-on experience in advanced technical academies.

There was a fervent debate in this country in the early 1900s about engineering education but this resulted in the educationalists organising specialised three-year degree courses based around a discipline, such as civil, electrical or mechanical engineering, and the practitioners insisting on retaining pupillage and apprenticeship as the means of providing practical training. At that point, universities, employers and professional institutions became fragmented. Subsequently, sandwich course degrees attempted to introduce training into degrees and the Finniston Report entitled, ‘Engineering our future: Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Engineering Profession, 1980’ recommended that all engineering courses should be enhanced by the introduction of more engineering application themes into the curriculum.

In Japan, like in Britain, the Japanese term for an engineer is ambiguous since it can be applied to operatives, technicians or graduate engineers. This is in complete contrast to Germany and France where the term ‘engineer’ has a privileged public image. McCormick (1988) points out an interesting difference between British and Japanese engineers seek to maximise the social distance between themselves and operatives, whereas in Japan, a great deal of effort goes into minimising this social distance. It is this that perhaps contributes most significantly to a higher productivity of the Japanese manufacturing industries. Germany too has a flourishing manufacturing industry whereas the UK relies much more on financial services driving its economy.

The English education system is well known for its early specialisation. The Education Act of 1988 is an important step in ensuring that there is a core curriculum that covers the arts, sciences and humanities. Broadly educated people develop social and communication skills which are very important when working in industry and commerce. In Britain, we produce graduate engineers in the short timescale of 3 years with very low dropouts, many of them being at an age of only 21 but it must be questioned whether this really is an advantage. In the building industry, it is essential to have people that have a broad vision and the ability to reason and listen to other people. The Baccalaureate broader-based degree is favoured in Continental Europe.

Broad-based school education and the larger numbers studying beyond compulsory school leaving age means that 95% of Japanese youth are still studying maths and science at the age of 18 and so the potential recruits for university are much larger than in Britain.

The other essential difference in engineering education in Britain and countries like Germany and Japan is that the industry has invested heavily in training including continuing professional development but too often in the UK, it is seen as a cost rather them an investment.

Patterns of thinking

The mechanistic Cartesian world view based on the principles of Newtonian physics has maintained a strong influence on the Western scientific thinking for over three centuries. Objective truth was established by the experiment. But, however rigorous the method was, there remained the problem that laboratory experiments are limited in their field of application. Reality and rigour are conditions not easily achieved simultaneously but field research is so important to complement that carried out in the laboratory. Capra (1989) quotes R. D. Laing as saying ‘the universe was a vast machine yesterday; it is a hologram today’. Prigogine (1984) and Capra (1982, 1988) show the limitations of Newtonian thought and look at examples in psychiatry, physics, medicine, where its limitations have become starkly clear, mainly during this century and holistic approaches are now debated. We have to manage objective and subjective factors. Transdisciplinary working across sectors is becoming a reality too.

In building design, there has to be a system view during the whole process of design, construction and operation. Solutions cannot just be calculated because people use buildings and respond in different ways to the environment that they create. Subjective knowledge should be highly valued and not seen as a threat to the quantitative or more traditional analytical aspects of a discipline. Rational knowledge, objectivity and quantification have their place but there needs to be more confidence in dealing with human values and human experience. There has to be a balance between analysis and synthesis as both are key.

Health of mind and body inside buildings has become an important topic in recent years. There are some people that believe one can develop a formula which will incorporate all the variables associated with wellbeing. This defies a well-established tenet in the philosophy that the sum of the whole is more than the sum of the individual parts. What we need to achieve in designing buildings is an environmental setting which suits the particular work being undertaken and allows the individual to adjust the variables which comprise that environmental setting. The tolerance bands for these variables can, in some cases, be estimated or based on empiricism but the environmental setting needs to be established by experience derived from post-occupancy evaluation (POE) studies. Now wearable technology means we can measure human performance in various environments and this needs to become a part of POE. One can learn a tremendous amount from the buildings that are in use. This may mean some modification to views about professional responsibility and there will be scope for other disciplines to become associated with the evaluation of buildings in use.

CODA

Planning is now focusing more on social value. Buildings and locations in towns and cities are for people first. COVID 19 has shown us how fragile our ways of living are and sustainability demonstates how we must cherish the Earth and its treasures. Perhaps countries need to share ideas, knowledge and resources more and worry a little less about tight national control.

The indigenous Cherokee elder, Stan Rushworth, once said ‘the difference between a Western settler mindset of, I have rights and an indigenous mindset of I have an obligation.’ Instead of thinking that I am born with rights, I choose to think that I was born with obligations to serve past, present, and future generations, and the planet herself.’

With rights come responsibilities to others and the planet.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.