Failure Modes of Engineering (FeME): a network for future inclusivity, sustainability, and global impact

The TERC Report highlights a set of key priorities crucial to our future. Of those, we are focusing on  socially and environmentally responsible approaches to engineering, nature-based engineering, and global engineering solutions. Environmental sustainability and the creation of a global community that is prepared to mitigate and adapt to climate change are common threads to those priorities, and arguably, some of the most important challenges that we will ever face. Engineering is at the interface between society and the environment, making it a powerful tool to fight climate change at a global scale. Women are disproportionately affected by the impact of climate change, and that their full inclusion in developing engineering approaches is crucial to finding effective solutions to these grand challenges.
In order to understand the issues and potential that engineering brings to tackle this problem, we propose here the use of “failure modes”, a method taken from traditional systems engineering, to develop a network that delves into the complex relationship between engineering, nature, and society. Failure modes are commonly used in engineering as a methodical approach to identify and prioritize potential issues in design, manufacturing processes, or products. By examining the causes and effects of these failure modes, engineers can enhance reliability and improve outcomes. Drawing on this concept, our network aims to tackle the failure modes of current engineering practices, particularly in relation to climate change and its impact on women, children,  and underrepresented groups globally. Moreover, we want to empower them as crucial agents for the future engineering that we need. This systems-thinking approach will enable us to propose solutions for the future challenges of engineering. The failure modes will form the foundation of our proposal and guide our activities.
Our failure mode analysis identified several areas that are critical to enable the future engineering that our planet needs, such as the inclusion of female talent, social acceptability, global data provision, involving underrepresented groups, interdisciplinarity, and working with limited resources. The excellence of our proposal stems from our unique perspective on engineering challenges and our approach to identify and address them . Following this whole systems approach, we have co-created our network with multiple partners: our core leadership team is composed of academics from a range of academic schools at the University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow and Heriot-Watt University, and we have the support of several other colleagues in different academic, industrial and third sector institutions globally. Together, we are proposing a wide range of activities to grow and support our global network, including workshops, seed funding calls, training and dissemination activities, awards, a mentoring scheme, a coaching and leadership programme, secondments, building communities of practice, or design challenges that bring engineers from the Global South and the Global North together, among others. A relevant proportion of these activities will take the form of flexible funding calls to allow the inclusion of innovative and timely ideas. Our activities have a special focus on the role of education as a tool to empower children as future environmentally conscious engineers, and to create a society that reflects holistically on needs and resources. Moreover, we propose the use of feminist methodologies as a framework to nurture the diversity of our engineering profession from an alternative perspective.