The Business of Life with Dr King
Dr Ariel Rosita King brings on a variety of International guests from various countries, cultures, organisations, and businesses to talk about turning
problem into possibilities! Let's turn our challenges in opportunities together!
The Business of Life with Dr King
Engineering Society: The Foundations of Our Built World with Dr Kubilây Hiçyılmaz (Scotland)
The ground beneath our feet may seem solid, but during an earthquake, everything can change in just 15-20 seconds. In this eye-opening conversation with Chartered Civil Engineer Dr Kubilây Hiçyılmaz, we explore how civil engineering quietly shapes every aspect of our daily lives while revealing the profound responsibility engineers have in creating resilient communities.
Civil engineering isn't just about buildings and bridges—it's about ensuring society itself can function. As Dr Kubilây Hiçyılmaz explains, the term reveals its purpose: "civilian engineering" designed to serve civilian needs. From the water flowing through your taps to the roads connecting communities, civil engineers are the hidden guardians of infrastructure that enables modern life.
The stakes couldn't be higher. When major earthquakes struck Pakistan (2005), Haiti (2010), and Nepal (2015), poorly constructed buildings collapsed in seconds, claiming between 10,000-200,000 lives. These tragedies highlight a troubling paradox: we entrust our families to structures often built by workers with minimal training. Yet through better skills and implementation practices, buildings can withstand nature's most violent forces.
Perhaps most surprising is civil engineering's impact on public health. "Dysentery is not a medical problem; it's primarily a civil engineering problem, Dr Kubilây Hiçyılmaz provocatively states. By providing clean water and proper sanitation, engineers prevent illness before medicine becomes necessary—potentially saving more lives than healthcare interventions.
As we wrestle with infrastructure maintenance challenges, energy needs, and balancing cost against safety, this conversation reveals that civil engineering isn't just about technical solutions—it's about making ethical choices that shape society. What kind of world are we building, and at what cost? The answers lie not only in steel and concrete but in how we value human life and dignity.
Listen now to discover the hidden infrastructure that makes civilization possible and how engineering choices ripple through every aspect of our existence.
Music, lyrics, guitar and singing by Dr Ariel Rosita King
Teach me to live one day at a time
with courage love and a sense of pride.
Giving me the ability to love and accept myself
so I can go and give it to someone else.
Teach me to live one day at a time.....
The Business of Life
Dr Ariella (Ariel) Rosita King
Original Song, "Teach Me to Live one Day At A Time"
written, guitar and vocals by Dr. Ariel Rosita King
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Hello and welcome to the. Okay, let me start.
Speaker 2:You have your style.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Business of Life, and today we have a very special guest. Sir, could you please introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:Hi, thank you for having me on your podcast. I'm Kubi Lajic-Somas and I'm a Chartered Civil Engineer by profession.
Speaker 1:That's really fabulous. So today I'm really looking forward to our conversation, because it's quite rare. Could you please tell us your specialty, and why did you choose the specialty that you have?
Speaker 2:Sure, I studied civil engineering as my undergraduate degree. I went to work and then decided that I wasn't skilled enough or there was more to learn and I went back and did a MSc, a Masters in Science, in Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, and that has led to a career of doing lots of projects in the built environment, but also many of them which have an earthquake engineering component. So the speciality is earthquake engineering, but it is really about civil engineering and, by definition, a lot of that it is civilian engineering for civilian purposes.
Speaker 1:I love that. I never thought of that.
Speaker 2:So for civil, for people, for people for societies engineering for society, civil society, civil engineering very interesting it's, it's about building for society infrastructure, uh, transportation roads, uh, I trade is enabled by infrastructure and you know the shipment of goods, shipping routes, train routes, road routes and nowadays I suppose it's data routes, electronic routes, communication routes.
Speaker 1:But that is all engineering. Wow, I had no idea.
Speaker 2:Information travels through, yeah, and it makes the world go round, and engineers have a valuable place to play in enabling all of that. I mean, there's a small charity called Bridges to Prosperity that builds small bridges to link typically rural communities together and that facilitates a safer passage of people and it's usually foot bridges, but it helps trade, and if people can trade and the cost of trade reduces, then they are more likely to be able to make a livelihood. If they can make a livelihood, they can probably have a greater chance of dignity because they are able to pay their own way, and that is a simple and important aspect of any civil society.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So even what I'm hearing from you now civil engineering basically is the way that our society functions so that we can function. I mean it basically covers every possibility.
Speaker 2:It's a component of it. Yes, so if I, if I was to think of architects and engineers, we are probably the custodians of the built environment. So there are teachers and educationalists and lecturers in theory, teachers and educationalists and lecturers in theory, they are the custodians of teaching and sort of passing on existing knowledge to the next generation. Then there are nurses and midwives and doctors and sort of laboratories that are more in the healthcare, medical field. You know, we all have an element of, of contribution, and how do we bring that all together to for the benefit of civil society that is civilized and is civic with each other?
Speaker 1:thank you. Can you tell us more about your specialty? I'm so curious about it. Um, uh, I guess you have a specialty in earthquakes or making sure that yeah, can you tell us more about? That sure.
Speaker 2:I mean earthquakes happen all the time and some large earthquakes happen, uh, in less frequently. And if we have humans living where big earthquakes happen, and if the buildings and bridges and infrastructure is not designed to withstand the shaking, they come down quite quickly. So an earthquake, a large earthquake, affects hundreds of square kilometers and if it is a populated area, in 10-15 seconds that's the usually the significant duration in which most of the energy is in a large earthquake maybe 20 seconds. During that time, if the buildings stand, they stand, and if they don't, they don't. So examples where damaging earthquakes happen japan has generally a good track record.
Speaker 2:Chile did reasonably well some years ago, but if I think of Pakistan, in 2005, in Kashmir there were 70,000 people who died, and then in 2010, there was 200,000 is the estimate in Haiti, and then in 2015, there was a Nepal earthquake where roughly 10,000 people died.
Speaker 2:It could have been a lot more had it been during school hours, during a weekday, but it happened to be on a Saturday where people were not at work and not at school. If an earthquake happens at night time, it's very devastating because people are in bed and asleep. If it's during the daytime, there are more people out and about so you're less likely to get caught up, and it transforms people's lives in a very, very dramatic, violent way. And as engineers, the profession knows how to build, we know the theory of it and as people in the built environment, we need to get that out there into buildings, improve building practice. So that analogy is like a car crash. You know, if a car crashes, you want to be able to walk away from the car crash. Your car might be written off, but that will only happen if the car is properly and adequately engineered.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then we have those options for buildings. And then the challenge is also how to bring engineering to people who are in high-income countries and low-income countries, and you know the the the theoretical standards and codes may be unaffordable for lots of people in the world. So how do we bring engineering to them within their means so that they can have buildings and infrastructure that is less vulnerable, therefore more resilient? And if a community is less negatively impacted by one of these natural phenomena, then they are more resilient, then the downtime is less, the time to recovery is shorter and the society, the civic society, spends less time on emergency response.
Speaker 2:You don't need lots of medical response because people aren't injured and damaged too badly, you know. But take dysentery Dysentery is primarily water and sanitation issue. So if we can bring civil engineering to treat grey water or black water, which is sort of foul water and dirty water, contaminated water and we treat it, then it becomes clean and then if people have access to clean water it becomes easier to be healthy and you don't need, I mean, a lot of. Dysentery is not a medical problem, it's primarily a civil engineering problem. And then people need access to water within close proximity.
Speaker 2:And you know it used to be a tap in a village and then it was tap house and now it is multiple bathrooms and the kitchen. But actually what we are doing is we're making water more accessible in a convenient what? Reliable? Convenient way where it is safe to drink. And obviously if you wash your hands with clean water, then when you do your food preparation it is easier. And that is the sort of the housing, the architecture, the plumbing, the water treatment, the civil engineering works for that, how it all comes together. And that again is civilian engineering of soap to wash your hands and train a population to do that. Wash your hands after you've been to the toilet and develop those habits, then civil society reaps the benefits and you don't need medical treatment because you don't keep getting sick that's amazing.
Speaker 1:So that's civil engineering. So some of the first time in england when there was sanitation and sanitation pipes under the ground, this was engineering.
Speaker 2:And, as a result, it cut down on the public health.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, exactly. Wow, that makes a difference. You know, now that I'm speaking to you about this, I'm realizing that civil engineering affects our lives in so many different ways and many of us that are lay people and don't know civil engineering language, can you tell us more about how civil engineering affects our lives? I mean, already you've made it clear that it's also with I won't say internet, but with laying down of I won't say Laying down of, I won't say. For example, I believe that there was one country that was cut off from the Internet as a result of the layers under the ocean being cut. So, as a result, many countries.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Is that also considered an engineering issue? I mean, laying large cables in the bottom of the ocean through ferries is a manufacturing challenge. It's a logistics challenge. It's an engineering challenge in terms of how do you coil all the cables together and protect them and lay them account for all sorts of risks. I mean lots of ships that put down anchors. Sometimes they catch cables and it's just an accident.
Speaker 2:Civil engineering relies on humanity being civil with each other. Yes, so if we are going to be uncivil with each other and we use our skills to sabotage and break, then that is an option and sadly humanity explores that option from time to time. But that is not a civil form of behavior. We have to use our engineering skills. As a society, we have to have good judgment on whether it is sensible to do these things. So, for example, do we put a reservoir here? Do we use that water in a way to help irrigate the crops, or should we grow crops here or somewhere else? And then in modern logistics I suppose shipping Shipping allows us to move goods from all over the world to all over the world.
Speaker 2:It's not always obvious that a lot of this is very clever. For example, should I expect to eat strawberries in the middle of winter, wherever I am in the world, even though it is not the season of strawberries. Or should I be more happy? Should you, should I be more happy? Should you, should we be more happy with a seasonal availability and that is also more climatically informed in terms of the climate we live in? Uh, but equally, trade has enabled societies to prosper the old silk route and the infrastructure that was put into that. That was about trade spices and pottery and linen.
Speaker 2:And then you know, if we go through the industrial revolution, the steam engine, that's access to power, energy in a way that is at a scale larger than before and at an economic price point that is cheaper than before, and civil societies have usually prospered when they have access to energy at a cheaper price. To energy is a fundamental, fundamentally important, and there's lots of geopolitics around at the moment. There are various positions being taken on what is right to do. Certain countries are experiencing rising energy costs, which goes into the cost of fertilizer, which goes into the cost of shipping, which goes into the cost of everything, and but the prosperous society is typically one of the characteristics is that they have access to reliable, cheap energy. And then, as engineers, how do we enable that to happen in a way that is considerate and thoughtful of the environment, in a way whereby we try to mitigate and minimize the adverse impacts? And we try to do that so, you know, if there is a power plant, are the gases cleaned as much as possible? Does the fuel burn properly and fully? Do we do the maintenance to make sure it is efficient? Is the location of the energy production facility close to where humans are? These are all engineering logistics.
Speaker 2:And how are we using our skills to be civil with each other? I think it's actually not a. In some ways, the clue is in the word. It is civilian engineering, civil engineering for civilian purposes, and humanity benefits from it. You know, do we build bridges that are robust? Do we build tunnels that allow safe passage through mountains? Build tunnels that allow safe passage through mountains or under rivers or whatever things like that? How do we do that? Do we build reservoirs? Do we build roads? Do we build railway lines? All of these things? How do we do housing in a way that is pleasant and nice? The acoustics are good, fire performance properties are good, the space is nice, it's ergonomic, it is well ventilated and all of these aspects, the light is of sufficient quality. These are all engineering aspects to consider, and civil engineering is just one of those aspects.
Speaker 1:That's actually amazing, so it can make a big difference. May I ask where do you see civil engineering in five years from now and then in 10 years from now? How do you see it growing and developing for society?
Speaker 2:So there are some societies, countries, where there is a lack of modern infrastructure or a lack of infrastructure, so it's about putting in primary new infrastructure in place that they don't have In other locations. It's about maintaining the existing Because it just requires maintenance. It's made, probably adequate, but it requires maintenance. Maintenance is very cheap in the scheme of things, and in some societies where maintenance hasn't happened, it will be the very painful choice to let it completely disintegrate or replace it, and if you don't do maintenance, you probably have to then replace it. That's a very, very costly choice for society. So in a number of countries you can see, maintenance is no longer properly happening. Drains are blocked, trees near roads and buildings aren't being trimmed and maintained. Trees are gaining root in buildings. The roots are damaging the buildings and from an environmental point of view it would be nice to have the trees, but not while it is destroying the existing built environment, because the alternative is that we have to knock it down and fully replace it, and that's very expensive. So depending on where you are in your developmental cycle and the pressure of the population, the needs will be different, and then the challenge for us is how to use as much of the existing as possible.
Speaker 2:Work with nature, understanding gravity I mean gravity tends to work in one direction and the climatic conditions wind and solar and snow and ice and earthquakes are what they are. We have an idea of what they are and how do we work? Understanding that? How do we detail it? And then the practical side of it, on the execution the people working with the materials, with their hands, assembling, manufacturing the pieces, fabricating the components, transporting them, joining all the pieces together, making sure the sequencing is correct, that the water does flow into the gutter and not into the building, and all of these aspects. That requires a high level of skill. And I mean here's a paradox.
Speaker 2:As a generalization, the world over, buildings and civil infrastructure are often the construction often happens by some of the least skilled people in society. Build people in society. Yeah, so most people put their most precious belongings, their family, into houses that have been built often by people who have the least amount of training in society they have. You know, they're often the people who are hand to mouth. They get hired on a day labor basis and that seems a poor investment in terms of you put your most precious thing into the building that's been put together by the least skilled people, even though you're going to live in that building every day. There's a paradox there. It's a generalization. You know, obviously there are many buildings that are put together very well, but in the world, over the skill levels required, there's constant training needed because you have to translate the theory into practice.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's very easy to say there shall be good buildings, there shall be nice tunnels, there shall be nice railways.
Speaker 2:That's a very easy thing to say, but have you tried building 10 kilometers of railway and putting in all the sleepers and the ballast and the switching points and the power distribution and the cables and the signaling and the barriers and the fences? It's all required. And if you've made that investment, then wouldn't civil society be well advised to look after it and maintain it?
Speaker 1:then wouldn't civil society be well advised to look after it and maintain it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, because it costs less to maintain thanfall and avalanches and manage waters and landslides because of their nature. And they recognize that because it's an investment, because if every dollar or hundred pounds, or whatever your unit currency, is that you spend on risk reduction, you're probably avoiding multiples of that in emergency response. So two years ago we were in Kahraman Marash in Turkey and you know 50,000, 60,000 people died. Many parts of many of the cities there were collapsed and fallen down and it didn't need to be like that, but that is what happened. And now the consequences you have large piles of rubble. You've got a lot of personal grief because lots of people have lost loved ones and family members and friends and relatives. You have all of that to deal with. And then you've got all the broken housing and infrastructure. That all needs to be cleared and processed. And then you have to.
Speaker 2:Will society build making the same mistakes? And the urgency and the desperate need to get shelter would put the pressure on you running out of time and resources, so you will repeat the same mistakes. And how do we, as engineers, architects, built environment professionals, use our skills? And what choices does society make? There is also a society level choice. If everybody chooses not to put the required reinforcement in because it's cheaper not to, that is also a choice. If everybody chooses not to wear a seat belt in a car is a choice. If people don't maintain their car wheels and the tread becomes thin and they're driving too fast, or it is rainy or snowy and then they can't. The car doesn't have the traction on the road, that is. That is a choice, that's true, but may I say with engineering with engineering, pardon, with engineering.
Speaker 1:For many of us it's not really a choice. How it gets built, you assume that the laws are going to be strong enough in order to make sure that the engineers and those that are actually building it. It's going to be built to quote, unquote, to code. So, although the other ones are, you see, those a personal choice, and the tires are personal choice. When a building is being built, and and, or when the house is being built pardon me, it could be anything or anything that you live in you would think it is being built to code. You might be paying for it to be built to code, but that might not happen.
Speaker 2:And so there are two aspects to it. So that is an easy position assumption to make. Codes are usually minimum standards, and even achieving minimum standards is quite difficult. But in the built environment the general generalization is that everybody wants the cheapest price for everything and there's a tension there. Nobody wants to pay more for their house than they need to, and if you are procuring a project you know everybody wants the. The winning contract often will be selected on price. So people don't want to spend hundreds of millions if they don't, if they don't need. So there's always a pressure on price.
Speaker 2:Price in itself doesn't necessarily guarantee quality, but it is an indicator of quality. And then sometimes there are issues of basic materials. Do you pay for cheap steel or do you pay for more expensive steel? And that that's just a straight investment in the quality of materials. It's a bit like washing up liquid. You can buy cheap washing up liquid for doing your dishes and you require a lot of it and it stops being bubbly and defective very, very quickly. Or you can buy better washing up liquid and it somehow seems to take much less and it works better. And it's the same with cheap paint. Cheap paint, you put it on, it goes on, but six weeks later it's already starting to show signs of distress and it's peeling off. Good quality paint probably costs quite a lot more that people make choices sometimes people make choices because that's all they can afford.
Speaker 1:May I ask, as an engineer that works specifically with helping for buildings to stand, people to walk away with their lives during earthquakes today, how do you find the juxtaposition of the cost with what's really needed in order for people to be able to walk away from buildings from earthquakes? As an engineer, how is that tension between the two?
Speaker 2:It's probably more a personal opinion. I think it's somewhat tragic. My anecdotal experience tells me that it probably wouldn't have taken much difference in cost or effort to put something together much better using the same materials, but having the skills and the training to be able to do that, which requires investment. So you can I mean, you can build a lego tower and you can. You can build a robust lego tower. Or you can build a Lego tower and you can build a robust Lego tower. Or you can build a very vulnerable, glimsy Lego tower using the same Lego pieces.
Speaker 2:And so there is a component of it is how well do you put the pieces together? It's a bit like if you know how to bake, well, you will take eggs and flour and milk and water and whatever and you will put it together in a well in a way. That is, you know how the mix should feel, you know how to bake it, you know when to take it out, you know how to let it rest, but equally, you can burn it, you can make a total mess of it, you can put too much, and it's the same ingredients.
Speaker 2:This is part of the answer is part of the answer is, uh, getting the skills out there to to know how to do it, and one of the difficulties in society is that, uh, most educated, university educated, theoretically trained engineers are not working with their hands on site building, whereas the people on-site building don't necessarily know all the things that the engineers do. And it's to bring those two together, yes, but the medical profession has an army of helpers, you know, nurses and midwives, and lab technicians and all these people and they're very highly trained but they are a component of the medical profession to be able to offer that skill to society at scale.
Speaker 2:So you know, in engineering we have the sort of the designers, the consultants I suppose I would fit into that category and then you've got the contractors, you've also got the machine operators and you've got the tradesmen tractors, you've also got the machine operators, and you've got the tradesmen the steel, the welders, the carpenters, the joiners, the rebar fixers, the shutterers, and they all need training and they all need to understand how it all fits together. But interestingly, in the built environment often the labor is, as a generalization, the world over, it is men it is not always, but it usually is men and it usually is uneducated men or with lower levels of education. And you know, the nice theory of the calculation that I might have done is never communicated to them. So we have communication issues, so there's not a work together.
Speaker 2:Well, there certainly can be.
Speaker 1:That the various teams have not been able to learn what the other does, so you all work together.
Speaker 2:There's room for improvement. There's room for improvement, there's room for improvement. So, to your question about what does it take to build earthquake resilient buildings, I the easy argument to say it needs more money, and that's an easy argument, and it's an argument that everybody makes about everything in life. But sometimes, if you want to learn to read, you have to practice reading and you have to just practice, practice yeah, and it just takes effort.
Speaker 2:So, uh, you're conscientious enough to keep at it and practice, uh, and the time to implement the details and check the quality. And you know, on a construction site things happen on site. You can't check it remotely, you have to be physically there.
Speaker 2:You have to be the middle managers, people with experience and skills, need to be there seeing and helping, spot mistakes early. If you spot it early, you can take corrective action before people have spent all the money and run out of time. If you wait until the end and you come and say, oh, but this is wrong, now there's a real problem. People have run out of time, they've spent the money and it is wrong. Now this is a commercial problem for everybody. Yeah, so we could be much kinder to each other to achieve more. Thank you for that. We could be civil with each other. Our time is almost up.
Speaker 1:So I'm just wondering, as an engineer, a civil engineer who specifically works in earthquakes can you give us an example of one of the best either projects, or one of the best countries, or one of the best cities that actually does what they can in order for this to be a positive?
Speaker 2:the engineering that's one of the best within, in your opinion, of course yeah, um, I'm not going to fully bite because best is an emotive term and it depends on the context. I think, depending on the socio and economic condition, there is some excellent work being done in all sorts of countries and places. Progress is being made in many countries. As a generalization, more developed countries are able to afford more on the engineering and architecture and the quality control, so it is sort of as part of the. It's a consequence of being more developed and having a more sophisticated civil society, with institutions, learning institutions, training institutions. There are some amazing projects around the world, some of with institutions, learning institutions, training institutions.
Speaker 2:There are some amazing projects around the world. Some of them are in developing country contexts. I mean, I remember one example was a building in Haiti where 200,000 people had died and we were looking at it and even the tiles crossing a movement joint hadn't broken, where lots of buildings had collapsed, and the owner of the building went away and came back with a box of photos and it was a photo of the foundations being dug and her father had built the building himself and he had heavily invested in the foundation and it was bittersweet because the story was that she remembers people laughing at her father for investing in all the foundations. Yeah, but come 2010 and the earthquake, actually that building did survive, yes, and there was an individual there who put his money on what he believed in and made the investment and, even with suboptimum conditions, was able to put together a building using modern engineering materials of reinforced concrete and steel, and it did very, very well. But equally, there are some traditional buildings around the world that do very well if maintained.
Speaker 1:So it's not a full direct answer. I didn't give you a best no, it's excellent, and actually I'm going to invite you back again because our 30 minutes, our 30 plus minutes, are up. So I want to thank you for being with us and I'm looking forward to inviting you back again because I think this is a very important and interesting subject.
Speaker 2:So, dual engineering and the truth is, I think, that we don't get enough of it.
Speaker 1:We don't, we don't talk enough about this, and this affects all of our lives, every day. So thank you, and thank you to our audience for being with us. And remember, if I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, then when Hillel said that, and I say if not me, then who? Thank you for being with us?