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Martinez Rosa
ENGL 1301-122
Dr. Sharity Nelson

1 December 2022

Rhetoric Analysis

Lund's academic journal “Systems engineering knowledge and skills for water and

environmental problems” has been peer-reviewed and published on November 10th, 2020. This

article provides information about “…the various technical skills […], broader social and

problem-solving skills, and attitude which seem useful […] for effective system engineering.”

(Lund 183). This article argues that engineers need one another to complete a task because “Few

major water and environmental problems can be solved by one person…” This means that many

people need to cooperate and work together with others to create promising results. (Lund 183).

This provides the central reason to cooperate with many fields. Lund shows this by providing

examples of historic events, communication reasons, and field applications. He can demonstrate

his thoughts and findings on these sections by using ethos, logos, and pathos thus making his

essay effective to the reader.

In the first place, communication and involvement are essential to this field because

“internal and external communications are vital” to every engineer that plans to work in this

field. (Lund 188) according to Lund, a person can only succeed if they can communicate. Lund

used ethos and pathos to express these arguments. For example, “Aside from conflicting

interests, the hardest people problem is usually communications.” (Lund 188). This statement

shows a subtle sign of emotion because it indicates that cooperating with others is not always as

easy; people have vast viewpoints, and although diversity is essential, it could cause problems

within the field of study. This could also indicate that people get frustrated when working with
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others but learn to manage and learn to work with others. A solution that Lund found was to

interact with everyone in an effective way by incorporating these simple things he was able to

communicate with the team. For example, “Listening, reading, writing, and speaking...” are vital

for everyone that wished to produce outcomes when working with others, he was able to reduce

it to these steps to show that interacting is important and although not difficult to accomplish, is

hard to do. (Lund 189) Furthermore, this could be an indicator that not all companies are the

right fit for everyone so “Work[ing] with more effective organisations and people.” can improve

the working environment. (Lund 191). This indicates that people should be able to understand

people around them could affect progress. Communicating with peers is always best when

working in an environment that needs work cooperation. These statements do have a significant

impact because they do state their motive, however, they are ineffective because they are just

statements without backing. However, many aspects do depend on the person who is working on

the project, if a person can’t apply their knowledge to their work, then efficiency can decrease.

Applying knowledge can seem difficult, however, there are many ways that an employee

can incorporate a better structure to accomplish their work. An engineer might need skills such

as “… fundamentals [that can be/] are applied [in] mathematics, statistics, system simulation and

optimisation, operations research, and economics, resting on domain knowledge of civil and

environmental engineering theory and practice, plus a willingness to learn from any other field as

needed.” (Lund 184) These examples show areas of expertise engineers might need, Lund

explains that organization is important he states, “Organising problems so they can be better

understood, discussed, and solved...”. This indicates that people need to be able to organize their

work so that it could be understood therefore being efficient. Although, this is not the only

method as engineers must be able to “Provide insights” so that fellow engineers are on the same
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page. (Lund 185,186) Being able to understand the concepts of the project can lead to a good

outcome, however not every proposal is going to be accepted because of a lack of organization,

“Involving stakeholders usually helps in organising a problem…”; not every proposal that is

presented will be accepted which can bring a person to feel disappointed in themselves. (Lund

187) This shows ethos because the statement was added to explain that a plan could fail at first

but may have value in the future and was supported by another author. Applying your knowledge

to a project doesn’t always mean success, however, there could be a chance down the road when

that idea could be implemented in. This part of Lund’s statant was effective in delivering its clear

motive as he was supported by other authors. These types of occurrences are common and are

shown in historic events.

History has a way to come back to modern times, which was shown with the water

system. For example, “Safe urban drinking water developed rapidly in the late 1800s and early

1900s from the adoption of piped water systems drawing from larger better […] sources and the

adoption of water filtration and chlorine disinfection” is a historic occurrence that many people

had to suffer through. (Lund 191) Engineers had to come together and figure out ways to

effectively find a solution to this problem, however, their studies had to develop which brought

“Utility engineers, their consultants, and state regulators…” to work together to effectively work

on the waterways. (Lund 191) this goes to show that communication and progress are essential to

moving forward. An example of a challenge is the rural water supply, it states “Even in

prosperous countries, rural drinking water systems often have unacceptable contamination and

low reliability.” (Lund 193). This indicates that even with modern technology engineers still

have problems managing and solving problems. Although many modern systems are examples of

old plans, they are still effective with the plans they just had to be modified a bit to make them
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effective. With many advancements, people have learned to adapt and gather old ideas and

modify them to modern problems.

System Engineering is a department that requires the person to have many skills. Lund

specifies that engineers should be able to communicate and have an aptitude to learn and think

for themselves. Although many times an engineer might face hard times when dealing with

projects, it is recommended to save the drafts because they could always be re-used at a later date

when they are needed more “there are few pure successes, and many short-term failures that lead

to longer-term improvements.” (Lund 194). This goes to show that even if someone fails their

ideas could be repurposed. In history, there were many complications with the water system

which proved to be difficult to solve. Lund incorporated many examples by using ethos, pathos,

and logos. Lastly, Laud recognizes that system engineering could be difficult, however, he

admits that working as an engineer is a joy thus making the article efficient to read.
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Work Cited
Lund, Jay. “Systems Engineering Knowledge and Skills For Water And Environmental
Problems.” Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems, Vol. 37, no. 4, 2020, pp 183-196.
Taylor & Francis Journals Complete, doi:10.1080/10286608.2020.1850701.