From the very beginning of our operations, Black Square Engineering has been fundamentally set up and organised to allow our staff to be ‘digital nomads’. While we have very nice offices in Brisbane and Toowoomba, we can and do work anywhere – whether that is on the back of a barge in the Brisbane River inspecting a crane, in the Central Australian desert certifying equipment, in sewers in Melbourne commissioning equipment, or amongst the treetops testing apparatus and systems. ‘Today’s office’ is anywhere we need to be – and, at the moment, this means we are working from home. The technologies that allow for remote working are part of our everyday - we are more than used to working everywhere and anywhere. We’re well-practiced in the digital technologies that other companies have just begun trialling – so we are going full steam ahead amongst the COVID-19 pandemic. Our only issue continues to be (and this only applies to some of us), how to stop the kids from fighting or yelling right when we’re talking to our favourite clients or government regulators. They have a knack for it.
In the wake of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, the Institution of Engineers of Australia was inaugurated in 1919 as a national body to promote the science and practice of engineering and to foster a closer cooperation between Australian engineers, to inject science into industry and to assist in the development of Australian industries. Looking at the response to the current coronavirus, the drawing together of engineering might and resourcefulness has started happening already on a massive scale to help our medical personnel and officials diagnose, treat and contain the spread of COVID-19. Engineers (from all fields and both professional and amateur) are working around the clock on a multitude of coronavirus projects from designing and developing protective equipment for frontline medical workers to innovating ventilator designs to be able to produce ventilators quickly and cheaply for the surge of need around the world. From distilleries making hand sanitiser, to internet-connected thermometers collecting and mapping fever data, to app developers using smartwatches to look for signs of virus amongst individuals’ health data, – it seems the English Proverb, “necessity is the mother of invention”, has some basis.
Let’s not forgot that the Spanish Flu epidemic, which killed an estimated 50 million people globally, was only just over 100 years ago. Working from home in 1918 must have been a nightmare. But look at how far we have come since then. Our infrastructure, machinery, equipment and technology in 2020, while it can have its glitches (call us!), it allows us to keep working and pushing to make things better.
While there have been epidemics and pandemics of diseases that have come and passed over the last 100 years, it is easy to get overwhelmed in the current COVID-19 moment with the scale of the pandemic, immediacy of restrictions, economic decline and uncertainty about what the next few months will bring. But we are still working, still here. We have a vast experience in problem-solving both technical contradictions and physical operational difficulties. So now is the perfect time to get in contact (socially distanced via phone or email, of course) to have a conversation - whether that is to look at current project or getting design/certification/testing (etc.) sorted now, or to get prepared for the future so that when COVID-19 is no more we can hit the ground running with your project.
Give us a call, flick us an email - let’s have a conversation.