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ONE OF Britain’s first centres of excellence in engineering design is
due to open today at the University of Lancaster. It is part of a long-awaited
government scheme to revive Britain’s ailing engineering industry; by the
beginning of next year, four Engineering Design Centres are scheduled to
be open.

But the success of the scheme, funded through the Science and Engineering
Research Council and announced two months ago after five years of planning,
is already in doubt. A shortage of both funds and skilled people nearly
put back the opening of the Lancaster centre indefinitely.

Less than a month ago, Michael French, the university’s professor of
engineering design and director-designate of its centre, was ‘dithering
about whether to apply for a postponement’. He describes government support
for scientific research and technological development as ‘dismal’ and ‘a
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French’s main concern is his ability to recruit staff for the Lancaster
centre on the money available under the SERC scheme. His views are shared
by Ken Wallace, director-designate for a centre at the University of Cambridge.
‘It’s difficult to find people of the right calibre,’ says Wallace, who
has purposely scheduled the opening of the Cambridge centre for the new
year in an attempt to gain the time needed to appoint the experts he wants.

Engineering design has been a problem area for some time, says Vivien
Marshall, head of education and training affairs at the Engineering Employers’
Federation. She says that Britain has competed less well than it might have
done internationally, partly because it has not been good at translating
R&D into marketable products. ‘A lot is going on in altering engineering
courses to take account of design,’ says Marshall. ‘The centres would help.’

In June, the SERC promised Pounds sterling 3 million over four years
to establish Engineering Design Centres (EDCs) at the universities of Cambridge,
Lancaster, Newcastle Upon Tyne, and at City University in London. Newcastle’s
EDC, set up by Newcastle and Sunderland polytechnics and Newcastle University,
opened at the beginning of July; the centre at City University is due to
open on 1 October. French admits that he was always reluctant to postpone
the opening of the Lancaster centre and would probably try to make do. ‘It’s
important to get started,’ he says. All four sites need to attract financial
support from industry to survive.

The scheme springs from the SERC Design Initiative that started in 1985
in an attempt to encourage universities and polytechnics to submit more
grant applications to the research councils with an emphasis on engineering
design. The initiative was a response to the 1983 Lickley Report on Engineering
Design, and links the SERC and the Design Council. It took two years to
get off the ground, and came five years after the Finniston Report first
drew public attention to the enduring crisis in Britain’s engineering profession.

What may have nudged the British government into action was a similar
initiative in the US in 1984 to establish a network of Engineering Research
Centres at universities across the country. ‘The principal objectives were
to bring engineering practice into universities and to involve industry,’
recalls Dale Compton, professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University,
Indiana, and chairman of the government committee that proposed the initiative.

Four centres were set up initially, and then two or three a year since
then. Each one focuses on a particular topic – for instance, computer-aided
manufacturing at Purdue, bioengineering at MIT and civil engineering at
Lehigh University, Pennsylvania – and they must all encourage undergraduates
to be involved in the centres’ work. The National Science Foundation is
the main sponsor. It meets more than half of a centre’s cost, which means
up to $2 million a year; industry is expected to provide the rest. Compton
is pleased with the results. ‘One thing is clear; schools that have those
centres have developed close links with industry.’

In Britain, the new EDCs have between Pounds sterling 500 000 and Pounds
sterling 900 000 apiece to investigate ways of improving the conversion
of engineering ideas into competitive products. They will study how designers
work on a variety of projects, from power stations to engine valves, and
from robotic systems to dental fillings. The aim is to discover the basic
rules of good engineering design and, ultimately, to come up with computer
software for designing products that make the most of modern technological
advances, and at the same time can be produced as efficiently and economically
as possible.

‘A good piece of engineering design research will be generic,’ says
Peter Hills, former head of engineering design at the Cranfield Institute
of Technology’s Royal Military School of Science, and now SERC co-ordinator
of the scheme with the Design Council. He says that research on bridgework
for teeth, which are rooted in indeterminate human tissue, may help to solve
the problems of siting an oil rig on the unpredictable bed of the North
Sea.

The SERC’s Design Management Committee selected the sites for the first
four EDCs from 51 candidates. The committee had plans – and money – for
six centres; but it says that it was unable to find another two proposals
worthy of support.

Even London’s Imperial College, one of Britain’s major centres of technological
expertise, failed to convince the SERC’s peer review committees that it
deserved to be the site of an EDC.

According to Hills, between 70 and 80 applications had been expected
from the 100 or so colleges of higher education in Britain. But the two
months allowed to draft and submit them after the scheme’s formal announcement
in June last year does not seem to have been long enough for some institutions.
Hills says that the committee plans to spend the remaining money before
the end of 1990. He adds that it may, when it meets in late September, decide
to support three or four smaller EDCs, instead of two larger ones. (French
would like to see 20 centres within five years.)

Britain’s plummeting competitiveness is highlighted by international
trade figures for the 10 years since 1979. Even in Britain, where the demand
for engineering products increased by 22 per cent for the period, production
rose by only 9 per cent, says Ian Thompson, economic adviser to the Engineering
Employers’ Federation. As a result, imports increased nearly three times
as much as exports. Mechanical engineering products, such as machine tools
and process plant, were the least competitive. There was very little change
in the competitiveness of British electronics and computing equipment, despite
the rapid increase in sales of goods of this sort worldwide.

Only in the field of aerospace equipment is Britain more competitive
than it was 10 years ago, says Thompson. ‘More resources are needed to develop
expertise in engineering design,’ he says. There is much at stake; engineering
manufacturing in Britain currently employs more than two million people,
and these are expected to produce goods this year worth Pounds sterling
132 billion – 9 per cent of the GDP.

The delay in funding research in engineering design seems to stem from
a combination of three factors: the way SERC selects projects for funding,
its lack of knowledge and understanding of engineering as a discipline,
and its need to stretch restricted budgets to make them go farther. Early
conflicts between the SERC and the Design Council also did little to help
their joint initiative to get off the ground quickly.

‘Engineering’ was incorporated into the council’s name only after the
Finniston report, and scientists still dominate its full-time posts and
part-time committees, which review all requests for funding. The council
has a long tradition of support for scientific research, or the collection
of knowledge; ‘but it hasn’t been good at engineering – the application
of knowledge,’ says one former employee. ‘That’s not so much a criticism
of the SERC itself, but of the people on the peer review committees.’

When the Design Management Committee was set up in 1985, the SERC did
not give this committee the same authority as its other peer review committees.
Engineering design was seen as something that industry, with the help of
the Department of Trade and Industry, should nurture. Rather than assess
which proposals in its field were worthy of support, as other committees
did, the DMC was only permitted to vet the engineering design content of
proposals that were being assessed elsewhere for their relevance and feasibility.
This gave the DMC little clout; and, in an era of tight budgets, when the
other committees were jealously looking after their own interests, support
for engineering design was slow to develop as a result.

Only sustained lobbying by members of the design committee, particularly
after the DTI eventually decided that it would not support the initiative,
won a bigger commitment from the SERC. Four years after the Design Initiative
started, the council put up money for the centres of excellence and provided
the committee with a small budget – Pounds sterling 100 000 over two years
from next April – to support areas of research in engineering design that
are not covered by other SERC committees.

Despite its tardiness, the arrival of the scheme has been widely welcomed.
‘It is inadequate and late, but not too late,’ says Alan Jebb, director-designate
for the centre at City University. He sees problems in attracting staff
from industry to work in London, despite the appeal of a national centre
for engineering design and quality. ‘Would you take a senior post here for
Pounds sterling 23 000 a year?’ he asks.

Of greater concern to Jebb, who designed the first British tachograph
or ‘spy-in-the-cab’, is the research centres’ need to live up to the expectations
of the science establishment. ‘We’re on trial,’ he says. ‘If we make a mistake,
we could damn engineering design for 25 years.’