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Like all engineers, Professor Michael Readey has a passion for solving problems. Throughout his career in product development, he has worked on projects ranging from designing medical components used to separate blood cells to implementing large-scale biogas at massive landfill sites. However, the creative and elegant solutions employed in developing products can sometimes end up in unfamiliar territory for engineers—the courtroom. As a professor in the 91�Թ���’s Engineering Management Program (EMP), Readey now helps engineers anticipate challenges relating to engineering, law and product liability.

"It's important that we prepare students for the commercial and legal aspects of developing engineering projects in a robust and reliable way," says Readey. "That's very much what the Master of Engineering in Engineering Management at 91�Թ��� is all about."

Improving Engineers’ Communication Skills

In many ways, 91�Թ���’s engineering management degree is designed to break students out of their engineering silos. This approach can be seen throughout the Program.

“I’ve just finished a product development course where the idea is to explore how large companies develop new products,” says Readey. “The class starts off by trying to identify a problem. The students blast through that part really fast because they want to get to the technical solution.”

At this stage, Readey steps in to apply the brakes.

“We slow that whole process down, which frustrates them a little bit because they want to jump right to the technical answer,” says Readey. “I actually make them interview potential customers to see if they share the same vision of what the problem is. Often, they walk away thinking, ‘Oh, I had no idea this was the real problem.’ It's an enlightening experience.”

According to Readey, for many engineers, talking to somebody outside of their own technical environment can be anxiety-producing.

“Once they do it two or three times, all of a sudden that kind of anxiety breaks down, and then it becomes a much more natural process,” says Readey. “It's fascinating to watch them evolve through courses like that.”

The anxiety felt by many engineers when communicating with people outside of their technical silos is amplified when dealing with individuals from a completely different professional field. This is particularly true in more complex and potentially unfamiliar environments—like law.

Engineering and Law: Learning a New Language

According to Readey, the impact of engineering, law and product liability is something engineering students rarely get to investigate.

"In traditional engineering classes, at the undergraduate or even graduate level, students never really talk about those kinds of legal issues," says Readey. "It's all very technically oriented, which of course, is fine. But in an industrial environment, as you start to progress up the ladder, one of the things that you discover is that you do less and less of fundamental engineering work. Instead, engineers as managers increasingly look at commercial and legal aspects�� relating to their work."

When it comes to learning about legal issues, Readey compares the challenges engineering management students face with learning a new language.

"When compared to something like computational fluid dynamics, or looking at finance and how you calculate it, using simple spreadsheets is relatively straightforward from an engineer’s standpoint," says Readey. "However, when it comes to engineering law, it's a different language. I'm not trying to turn people into corporate lawyers, but they're going to be talking to people in the legal profession, and they need to speak their language."

While Readey’s goal is not to turn engineers into lawyers, he does admit that the experience can lead some students to pursue a legal career.

“One of the people who helped us get this course off the ground is a practicing attorney,” says Readey. “He was an aeronautical engineer himself in his early days. But, unfortunately, he learned that engineers could sometimes only facilitate change in a product’s design after a catastrophic event. So he realized early on that he could have a bigger impact on product design in the courtroom.”

Just like language students benefit from practicing with native speakers, Readey uses a similar technique to teach his students about produ