I came across this excellent video of Ralph B. Peck discussing engineering judgment. The interview was filmed in 1991 as the first installment in the Leaders of Geotechnical Engineering series. It was presented again at the 2008 Canadian Geotechnical Conference following Peck’s death at age 95.
Peck said an engineer with judgment needs a “sense of proportion,” including the ability to look at a calculation and decide whether it has the right order of magnitude. He also gave some great examples of engineers solving the wrong problem because they accepted an unrealistic movement criterion without understanding where it came from or whether it mattered to the structure.
His advice for developing judgment was very practical: learn from both precedent and theory, seek varied experience early in your career, study case histories, learn from experienced practitioners, and make back-of-the-envelope calculations before turning to a more complex analysis. He also described how Karl Terzaghi required him to keep a notebook while working on the Chicago subway. Trying to sketch what he had seen underground exposed the details he had missed and taught him how to observe more carefully.
That last point really struck me. We have better field data, more sophisticated software, and now AI tools entering our workflows, but none of them eliminates the need to understand the problem and recognize whether an answer makes sense. The full video runs about 37 minutes and is well worth watching, especially for younger geoprofessionals.
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