The Engineering Passion Express

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Brandon has been chasing a strange question for a long time: why does he love engineering simulation as much as he loves cooking, storytelling, and bowling? The answer showed up while watching the show The Bear. Underneath all of it is the same pursuit, not perfection, but mastery, the kind of deep understanding that quietly makes every decision better.

This episode maps out a "reversibility spectrum," from a CAD edit you can undo in minutes to decisions you can never take back, a bridge, an aircraft delivery, a medical implant, moments where reality only gives you one chance to find out if you were right. We revisit two stories already told on this podcast, Gustave Eiffel betting his fortune on a tower that might not stand, and Daniel Burnham racing an unmovable deadline to build the White City.

Along the way, a quiet shift in thinking: experience doesn't build mastery, feedback does. 

Join me as we explore:

1. Why engineering has always been about decision-making, not perfect design
2. The four levels of the "reversibility spectrum," and why irreversible decisions demand the most mastery
3. What Gustave Eiffel and Daniel Burnham's irreversible bets can teach us about high-stakes decision-making
4. Why feedback, not experience, is what actually builds mastery
5. How simulation tools accelerate the feedback loop engineers need to build judgment

Support the show

The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Send us Fan Mail

Every engineering decision is a bet about the future, but when should you actually try to optimize a design, and when should you just build for robustness instead? In this episode of The Engineering Passion Express, we trace the answer through 2,000 years of engineering history, from Roman aqueduct builders who worked by trial and repetition, to Newton's calculus turning motion and force into something predictable, to steam engines and aircraft becoming genuine optimization problems once the physics were well understood.

Then we push into today's frontier: modern semiconductors, where individual transistors are some of the most precisely optimized structures ever built, but the interaction of billions of them together creates a level of complexity we can't fully predict. That's where the real question becomes "How do you design for what you don't yet understand?"

Along the way we borrow an idea from an unlikely source, Jeff Bezos's "regret minimization framework," and apply it to engineering: instead of chasing peak performance, minimizing the cost of being wrong.

Join me as we explore:

1. Why optimization only works once assumptions, constraints, and variables are well understood
2. How steam engines and early aircraft mark two different eras of engineering certainty
3. Why modern semiconductor design has to move from optimization to robust design
4. How "regret minimization" gives you a different way to design under uncertainty
5. Why every leap in certainty eventually creates a new frontier of complexity we don't understand yet

Support the show

The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Send us Fan Mail

Engineers have no shortage of places to spend their time, or even places to spend their careers. In an ideal world, it would be clear what your company values, in reality it isn't. Rather than lament, working on understanding how you can work in the areas that you both like and is recognized as valuable is a worthwhile effort. 

In this episode, I'll cover at an extremely high level how company executives look at things, so that you can do your best work AND be rewarded for it. 

We'll go through what a company needs, why messages don't cascade down cleanly, how to get a pure signal about what is valuable and look at examples.

The goal of this episode is to raise your profile, and your career by working on things that will be valued.

It's an important topic, and definitely worth the 15-20 minute listen. 

Support the show

The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Send us Fan Mail

This episode is the companion episode to "The 100 year Journey from Surgeons with Reputations to Surgical Robots". It frames the value that you can takeaway for your engineering career. 

In this episode we discuss things such as:

1. Industry differentiation and the pressures that force it

2. Where values reveal themselves

3. Industry recognition vs. customer recognition

4. Who is rewarded under different paradigm

5. The right champions matter for technological adoption

6. The need for champions

Support the show

The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Send us Fan Mail

If you're an engineer trying to figure out where you can create value, this episode shows you where to look: where values themselves are shifting.

In this episode of The Engineering Passion Express, I take you on a 100-year journey from open surgery to surgical robots through three lenses: First, a sick man in 1910 traveling to New York to pick the right surgeon. Second, Dr. John Wickham, who coined 'Minimally Invasive Surgery.' And finally, Fred Moll, who founded Intuitive Surgical, who along with a team of engineers brought surgical robots to the forefront.

Join me and learn how many times before an invention comes along, the values of an industry need to shift to make it the right time for the adoption of the technology to be a benefit. 

Support the show

The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Send us Fan Mail

That title might lead those with certain proclivities to think incorrectly about the subject of this episode. In fact, in this narrative-style episode, we look at the invention of an entirely new category of toothbrush that happened back in the early 1990's. 

It may be easy to see this particular toothbrush in a store and think nothing of it, but that's overlooking the 5 year journey that it took to commercialize it. Would you risk committing 5 years of your life to delivering a toothbrush that perhaps no one would want? No?

Well one man did. 

This story contains themes of:

1. Finding the right person or people

2. Solving your own problem

3. Doing what matters to your customers, so that they fight for you

A toothbrush may never match the grandness of the Eiffel Tower, or the prestige of getting to build the White City as described in other episodes, but this one is important because this kind of idea is illustrative of what most engineers should be looking for: a problem they have, that they can apply their skills to deliver, while at the same time needing to stretch themselves into something bigger in order to handle all of the challenges that success comes with. 

I like this story and I hope you will too. 

Thanks for listening to The Engineering Passion Express,

Brandon Donnelly

Support the show

The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode of The Engineering Passion Express, we have a relaxed chat with Dale Rice, SOLIDWORKS Electrical Applications Engineer at GoEngineer, though despite the name, we weren't having drinks at all, we just didn't have a particular journey in mind when the conversation started. 

Dale has been supporting engineering companies for decades and has seen a tremendous amount of engineering, and he also is a good friend of mine.

This is not a narrative episode, rather it is a discussion between two old friends. 

You'll hear discussion about:

1. SOLIDWORKS and SOLIDWORKS Electrical

2. How to ensure you're not getting duped by demos

3. Making sure your boss doesn't compare you to the performance of a demonstration

4. Keys to implementing a software or a change in a process successfully

5. Thoughts on AI, it's coming impact in SOLIDWORKS and what we think it would be good to focus on. 

Here are a couple links to check out:

https://www.goengineer.com/webinars#on-demand

https://www.goengineer.com/blog

You can also reach out to Dale at [email protected] if you have questions around SOLIDWORKS or SOLIDWORKS Electrical. 

Support the show

The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode of The Engineering Passion Express, we take you on a journey from being the person who knows the physics, to understanding how a system will be fabricated.

This is not a narrative episode, rather it is an interview based episode with Lance Thrailkill, owner of All Metals Fabricating. Lance is a nice guy and great person to work with. You can check them out at https://www.ametals.com

Join me and learn how an engineer can increase their value by understanding design for manufacturing. Lance also left behind some valuable pieces of information. Here are his notes:

Manufacturing Tips for Sheet Metal

https://www.ametals.com/post/design-for-manufacturing-5-tips-for-sheet-metal-bending

Optimizing for Installation

https://www.ametals.com/post/dfm-tips-to-optimize-your-part-design-for-hardware-installation

Choosing the correct steel

https://www.ametals.com/post/how-to-choose-the-right-steel-type-for-sheet-metal-fabrication

Considerations for Punched Parts

https://www.ametals.com/post/five-dfm-tips-for-punch-press-operations-in-precision-fabrication

Welding Design Tips

https://www.ametals.com/post/7-dfm-tips-for-faster-better-and-higher-quality-welding

Precision Machining

https://www.ametals.com/post/7-dfm-tips-for-your-next-precision-machining-project

Surface Finish Considerations

https://www.ametals.com/post/your-guide-to-perfect-surface-finishes-how-all-metals-fabricating-matches-you-to-the-ideal-option

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Support the show

The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode of The Engineering Passion Express, we take you on a journey from working on projects that have utility, or known value, to the more abstract world of art.  

This story is told through the lens of Gustave Eiffel, French Engineer and bridge builder! You know his tower, but this story is an imaginative telling of how he went from someone focused on practical structures like railway bridges, to building icons, much of his inspiration stemming from a project he was selected to work on previously! It uses some historical information from the small amounts available about the personal life of Eiffel, along with a little bit of fantasy to fill in the gaps. 

Join me and learn how someone like Eiffel, a man of calculation and precision, could change his personality and risk it all on a gamble!

If you find yourself a bit reserved in your risk-taking, but you know you want to create something great, this is an episode for you. Let's take that journey together. Climb aboard now and listen!

Support the show

The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode of The Engineering Passion Express, we take you on a journey from having all the right technical skills to do a project, to being the person who has to manage a combination of similarly talented people for a larger scale project. 

This story is told through the lens of Daniel Burnham, Architect and one of the first urban planners! Daniel didn't set out to build the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, but when it was offered to him in recognition of his skill, he accepted the challenge.

Join me and learn where Daniel Burnham and the fair struggled, how he overcame hurdles, many of which were personal and how the fair would impact the world in decades to follow!


Show Notes and Links

If after listening to the episode, you want to learn a bit more about the details of the fair, a great book is "The Devil in The White City" by EriK Larson. Here is a link to it - https://amzn.to/42rF8sc 

Note: Devil in the White City is two books in one. It's about the fair, but also about a serial killer lurking at the same time. They are separated by chapters, and I found the engineering and architecture chapters far more engaging, so if you don't like horror stories, you can skip the H.H. Holmes chapters.

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The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

It is my hope, that this grows into a powerful community where people share knowledge, or their passions and find happiness in their pursuits of making things better by thinking like an engineer. 

The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

It is my hope, that this grows into a powerful community where people share knowledge, or their passions and find happiness in their pursuits of making things better by thinking like an engineer. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Support the show

The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly