Isambard Kingdom Brunel - Creativity and Engineering
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859)
English engineer (pictured right), and builder of
- over 1200 miles of railway in England and Wales (including the London to Cornwall
line).
- railway stations ( including Bristol Temple Meads and London Paddington).
- three great passenger liners (including the Great Britain, now in
Bristol, England).
- bridges (including the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol,
pictured right below).
Voted the second greatest Briton behind Winston
Churchill in a 2001 BBC poll.
Why was he so creative?
1. Vision
He wanted to create a new and exciting world, using new technology to build something beautiful
as well as functional.
Money didn’t interest him so much.
Getting the job done well and quickly was always his top
priority.
2. Customer focus
He built things for the people who used them, satisfying three important customer needs:
All three were evident in Brunel's great passenger liner, the Great Britain, - then the
world's largest ship.
His hotels and some of his carriages were luxurious for rich customers.
He attended to the smallest detail including the colour of the carriages.
3. Determined risk taker
Brunel:
- invested some of his own money in his work
- risked his own safety (he was injured making the Thames Tunnel, and the ship,
the Great Eastern).
- always saw a project to its completion (never accepting defeat).
4. Continuous improvement
He was always willing to:
a) use new engineering methods
For example, he improved his ships by strengthening along the line of the hull as well as across it (then the
usual practice).
His liner, the Great Britain (pictured right at its launch in 1843), was revolutionary
- the first ship with an iron hull and propellor propulsion.
b) challenge existing knowledge
c) freely exchange ideas with other engineers
(like his friend, Robert Stephenson , the inventor of the locomotive, pictured right).
So Brunel never took out a patent.
5. Lifelong learning
Brunel learned from:
a) his father
(Marc Brunel, a brilliant French engineer, pictured right).
b) his mistakes
(particularly his disastrous, South Devon railway, powered by air pressure).
He learned that technical brilliance isn’t everything, when he had to abandon his broad
gauge railway track in favour of the more widely used narrow gauge.
c) other people’s mistakes
He improved the Clifton Suspension Bridge’s suspension chain after closely examining
Thomas Telford’s (pictured right) Menai Bridge in Wales that had been damaged by gales.
d) using mathematics
He discovered that it isn’t the ship’s weight that’s important (as people then believed), but the weight
of water it has to push against, making the surface area of its
hull vital.
5. Ambition and hard work
Brunel:
- lived to work and had incredible energy (starting work at 6 or
7 a.m. and finishing late).
- was always seeking new and harder engineering projects (wanting
them to be the biggest and best).
- drove himself to exhaustion (to overcome his doubts and depression)
- sacrificed his leisure and family .
“My profession is after all, my only fit wife”, he once wrote.
6. Seizes opportunities
He was lucky to be born during the Industrial Revolution, when new railways and
bridges were needed.
But he was always quick to take full advantage of
his opportunities.
In 1835, when he was questioned by his Great Western Railway bosses about the cost and length of the proposed
London to Bristol line, he proposed to extend it to New York by building the Great
Western liner (pictured right above)!
Brunel also:
- designed and built a portable hospital for Florence Nightingale (pictured
right) in the Crimean War.
- helped to build the Crystal Palace (then the world’s biggest building, pictured right
below).
7. Technical skill
Brunel was tremendously talented and versatile: architect, surveyor,
civil engineer, mechanical engineer and ship designer.
8. Teamwork and toughness
Brunel:
a) always wanted to do the best work possible
So he:
- demanded that his employees had the same high standards.
- made all the important decisions.
- was ruthless with his building contractors (forcing many of them into
bankruptcy).
b) earned the respect of his employees
They respected him because he:
- forgave people’s mistakes (if they were doing their best).
9. Sense of responsibility
Brunel always:
- took full responsibility for the success of a project.
10. Bureaucracy
Brunel (pictured right at the launch of the Great Eastern liner in 1857) hated
bureaucracy and rules and regulations, particularly if they hindered:
Key quote on creativity
I...stick obstinately to one plan until I believe it wrong.
Key quote on management and
bureaucracy
I am opposed to the laying down of rules or conditions to be observed...lest the progress of improvement
tomorrow might be embarrassed or shackled by recording or registering as law the prejudices or errors of today.
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