ABSTRACT
This book provides, perhaps for the first time, a series of detailed studies of engineers at work, with the aim of providing insight into engineering as it is practiced today in several different settings in different countries. Our project emerged from discussions that highlighted the scarcity of such literature. The small set of extant contributions lie in such diversemedia that they are hard to find, especially for engineers and engineering educators. Even though more have appeared in the last decade, the relative lack of such literature is surprising, given the critical importance of engineering in sustaining human life on our planet today and in the future (Barley, 2005; Trevelyan & Tilli, 2007). This lack of readily available literature might explain why contemporary notions of engineering have drifted far from the realities of practice and are in urgent need of revision.
