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It has come to my attention in recent months that London house prices seem to continue to have a mind of their own. A good friend of mine is an expert in the field of residential basement development in the city. He was explaining to me the significant value that “going down” can realise for a home owner. It is not all rosy in the world of residential basement development though, as these constructions often cause issues with neighbours and planning authorities; neither appropriately prepared for the potential structural issues or procedural in accuracy’s. He has written an article on the subject on his new blog. I recommend if your in the market for this kind of residential basement development you read what he has to say and give him a call – he has become somewhat of an expert in the subject.

This is a great piece on coding for kids, with a link to a youTube video of a 12 year old lad talking about his app development experience. It is a great lesson in presentation technique and is that how we are going to see the iPad used in future – as virtual notes?

So coding is the new value add skill. There remains a question in my mind however about what to apply these skills towards. That combination of coding skills and real need is, I feel, important – one goes hand-in-hand with the other. It is therefore important to remember this and also that there is a real world out there too.

Inspiring stuff.

In engineering there are a number of ways to work. Using design optimisation software is one that you might think is more prevalent than it really is.

Perhaps it is be because many see the role of a design engineer to optimise a design themselves.

Optimisation software may also have been possibly oversold – by this I mean sales staff with strict targets have been forced to bend the truth a little to win sales, leading to skepticism of the true benefits of design optimisation software by both design engineers and their managers.

I feel that this is quite a shame.

As with any software, for design optimisation or whatever, it is only ever going to give you an approximation. This doesn’t mean it is therefore useless. The design engineer who takes a pragmatic view to using their design optimisation software will really see the benefits – and fast. It requires a change in how a design engineer maybe used to working but once one sees the benefits, it is a software tool no-one in their right mind would want to give up.

There are a few different software products on the market.

One that is well received is called modeFrontier and has applications both in design optimisation but also in process optimisation.

I’d recommend taking some time to learn more about the field of optimisation and see how this kind of software could benefit your organisation.

A lovely video remembering Richard Burns, the rally driver who died of brain cancer 6 years ago. They have a t-shirt to buy to support his charity.