[ Trade-offs ]

The hardest thing engineers (and many other professions) face is trade-offs.  The hard reality of many roles, positions, job descriptions and higher pay-grades is that we face impossible decisions where someone or some aspect ‘loses’. 

Cost or quality; heavier weight or less strong; noisy operation or faster response; rapid results or accurate results; reliability through redundancy or lower cost production.  These are dilemmas faced all the time on engineering projects and in asset management.

Of course, we want to maximise both options, but science and physics, or let’s just call it ‘the real world’, prevents that. 

We must accept trade-offs.