ABSTRACT
Engineering has a distinct role to play in policy advice. This chapter sets out a range of forms of policy advice as context for an argument about the role of engineering in policy. This argument begins with a set of considerations on the nature of engineering knowledge and practice (especially in distinction from other sciences) before exploring a set of case studies of engineering policy. The nature of the contribution that the engineering discipline makes in these cases is, I suggest, best understood by considering the narrative form of policy advice. I describe—by drawing on ideas of narrative explanations set out by Philip Roth, Mary Morgan and Norton Wise—the narrative structure of engineering policy advice and set out why that is a narrative structure, and what this leads us to conclude about the role of engineers and engineering in policy.
