The Most Important People in the World
Happy Friday!
If you turn on the “news” or scroll through social media, it’s easy to feel like this profession goes largely unnoticed. You don’t see headlines celebrating excellence in water system operations, or appreciation for a bridge that safely carried a million commuters home for decades. Very few marvel at a WWTP that consistently removes a steady stream of unpredictable impurities, often to levels equivalent to a single drop in a large pond (parts per trillion).
As an aside, people would appreciate WW treatment more if they realized that one town’s discharge is the next town’s drinking water supply!
And by the way, a shout-out here to O&M staff, the people who actually make things work. You realize, one can’t just turn off a wastewater treatment plant while waiting for parts.... The flow is gonna flow. Another under-appreciated but stressful little nugget ops staff gets to deal with.
Maybe in these times, being ignored is really the highest form of praise.
You do your jobs so well that the public and media can take it for granted. A luxury that enables a society to focus on forward progress. People just flip a switch, turn on a tap, or drive across town without giving a second thought to the thousands of calculations, environmental reviews, design decisions, and constant maintenance that make their lives possible every day.
Every drawing you stamp and every site challenge resolved is a quiet act of stewardship for the support and continuation of societal progress. Many major institutions have lost the public's trust over the last decade. But ours never wavered from its high professional standards and duty to serve the public good. Even while no one was looking. Even while "clients" (lets be honest, it's not their money) ignorantly or selfishly ranked low-cost engineering ahead of greater value, to the detriment of the public (the actual client) they're supposed to serve.
Media exposure is a poor measure of public appreciation, but unfortunately, it does influence it. Bad news and outrage, failure and scandal get 10x more eyeballs and clicks than excellence and accomplishment. It's when you start showing up on people’s Instagram feeds or on the crisis news network (CNN), that you know your professional standing is in decline.
I don't see that ever happening. Every day we get to work alongside the most important and (silently) respected people in the world. Truly top-quality human beings. I can't think of a profession more worthy of our short and very precious time on this earth.
Thank you all.
Enjoy this wonderful weekend.
Dave
Feedback and blowback are always welcome: dave@goodnewsfriday.com
All previous topics are available at @goodnewsfriday.com
Good News Friday: Successful Engineering Consulting, both hardback and Kindle, is on Amazon. 😄
Member discussion