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Welcome to The Wave Engineering Newsletter, your weekly guide to the cutting edge of engineering. Whether you're a seasoned professional, an eager student, or simply curious about innovation, we’re here to inform, inspire, and connect.

More than just a newsletter, we tell the human stories behind the tech—spotlighting the innovators, dreamers, and changemakers shaping our world. Backed by insights from Pipeline Design & Engineering and the Being an Engineer Podcast, we deliver the latest advancements, impactful collaborations, and stories that redefine what’s possible.

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What's the biggest non-technical problem that's blocking your current engineering project?

The textbooks taught us that engineering is about forces, materials, and mathematics. Solve the equations, meet the specifications, ship the product. But after 145 years, the Brooklyn Bridge still stands not because Washington Roebling was the best calculator in New York - it stands because he figured out how to engineer around human fraud. Medical device prototypes sit in labs waiting months for basic tubing not because the chemistry is wrong, but because supply chains weren't built for innovation speed. And the most brilliant technical solutions die in conference rooms not from physics limitations, but because engineers never learned how to give feedback that actually helps.

The evolution is clear: modern engineering success depends as much on mastering human systems as technical systems. This week, we're exploring three breakthrough moments where engineers solved their biggest challenges not by building better hardware, but by rebuilding the human processes around it.

We'll dive into how Roebling turned a catastrophic fraud into revolutionary quality control methods that saved the Brooklyn Bridge and became standard practice across all industries. We'll examine how Julie Schulte cracked the R&D supply chain bottleneck that's been choking medical device innovation for decades with a simple insight about what engineers actually need during prototyping. And we'll break down why "Radical Candor" might be the most important engineering skill you're not using in your code reviews and design critiques.

These stories prove that the next breakthrough in your engineering career might not come from better technical knowledge - it might come from better understanding of the messy human elements that make or break every project.

In 1878, Brooklyn Bridge chief engineer Washington Roebling uncovered a fraud that would have destroyed most engineering projects. Wire contractor J. Lloyd Haigh had been systematically replacing inspected steel wire with rejected material overnight, delivering substandard cables that would support thousands of daily commuters.

When Roebling's team caught Haigh's workers red-handed, the scope was staggering. Of 80 wire rings tested, only 5 met specifications. An estimated 500 tons of inferior wire was already permanently woven into the bridge's life-supporting cables. The fraud reduced the bridge's safety margin from 6 times the required strength to just 4 times.

Rather than tear down months of dangerous work, Roebling innovated. He calculated exactly how many additional wires were needed to compensate for the embedded substandard material - 150 extra wires per cable at Haigh's expense. More importantly, he developed revolutionary quality control methods that became the foundation of modern engineering practice.

Roebling pioneered 100% testing instead of statistical sampling, created chain-of-custody procedures to prevent material switching, and established investigative methods to detect fraud. His response proved that the best engineering solutions often come from working around imperfect conditions rather than demanding ideal ones.

The Brooklyn Bridge stands 145 years later as proof that innovative quality control can turn potential disaster into lasting triumph.

Read the full story at the link below.

Every medical device engineer knows the frustration: you need 5 pieces of tubing to test your next iteration, but suppliers demand 2,000-piece minimum orders with 8-week lead times. This supply chain mismatch kills innovation momentum when prototyping speed matters most.

Julie Schulte experienced this problem from both sides during her medical device supply chain career. When her company was divested in 2017, she launched Chamfr to solve what she calls the "chicken and egg" problem - engineers need components to figure out specifications, but suppliers only make custom parts after specs are finalized.

Chamfr works like Amazon but exclusively for medical device components. Engineers can search, filter, and order small quantities (1-20 pieces) with real-time inventory and 24-48 hour shipping. No quotes, no minimums, no weeks of waiting. The platform stocks "close enough" components that let engineers iterate quickly and discover what they actually need.

Starting with basic components like marker bands and nitinol tubing, Chamfr now offers everything from UV curing stations to raw resins. All 40+ suppliers maintain ISO 13485 certification, and the platform facilitates introductions then gets out of the way for production relationships.

Read the full article to learn how Chamfr is removing supply chain friction that's been slowing medical device innovation for decades.

My manager once told me bluntly: "Your feedback style isn't helpful - it could hurt us long-term." He handed me Kim Scott's "Radical Candor" and everything clicked.

Most engineers get feedback wrong because we fall into one of three bad quadrants:

Ruinous Empathy - We care about feelings but avoid direct challenges. "Maybe consider other options" when we mean "This won't work." I'm guilty of this.

Obnoxious Aggression - We challenge directly but don't care personally. "Your code is terrible" might be true, but it crushes people and kills innovation.

Manipulative Insincerity - We've checked out entirely. "Looks good to me" becomes our default, letting critical problems slip through.

The sweet spot is Radical Candor - caring personally while challenging directly. Instead of "This won't work," try "I'm concerned about thermal dissipation here. Let's walk through the calculations together."

Every code review, design critique, and technical conversation is a chance to practice Radical Candor. Engineering is a team sport, and the best technical solution means nothing if you can't communicate it effectively.

Become the engineer people actually want to work with and read the full breakdown at the link below.

Engineering is about solving, innovating, and connecting ideas to make a difference. Progress is a collective effort and your curiosity is what drives it forward. Thank you for exploring the dynamic world of engineering with all of us at Pipeline Design & Engineering and The Wave.

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“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” - Steve Jobs

In collaboration and creativity,
Brad Hirayama
Blueprinting tomorrow, today