The first global history of voluntary consensus standard setting. Finalist, Hagley Prize in Business History, The Hagley Museum and Library / The Business History Conference Private, voluntary standards shape almost everything we use, from screw threads to shipping containers to e-readers. They have been critical to every major change in the world economy for more than a century, including the rise of global manufacturing and the ubiquity of the internet. In Engineering Rules, JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy trace the standard-setting system's evolution through time, revealing a process with an astonishingly pervasive, if rarely noticed, impact on all of our lives. This type of standard setting was established in the 1880s, when engineers aimed to prove their status as professionals by creating useful standards that would be widely adopted by manufacturers while satisfying corporate customers. Yates and Murphy explain how these engineers' processes provided a timely way to set desirable standards that would have taken much longer to emerge from the market and that governments were rarely willing to set. By the 1920s, the standardizers began to think of themselves as critical to global prosperity and world peace. After World War II, standardizers transcended Cold War divisions to create standards that made the global economy possible. Finally, Yates and Murphy reveal how, since 1990, a new generation of standardizers has focused on supporting the internet and web while applying the same standard-setting process to regulate the potential social and environmental harms of the increasingly global economy. Drawing on archival materials from three continents, Yates and Murphy describe the positive ideals that sparked the standardization movement, the ways its leaders tried to realize those ideals, and the challenges the movement faces today. Engineering Rules is a riveting global history of the people, processes, and organizations that created and maintain this nearly invisible infrastructure of today's economy, which is just as important as the state or the global market.

The introduction of the New Engineering Contract (NEC) encourages a systematic approach to contracting which is multidisciplinary in nature and fully interlocked in form. The NEC is intended by its supporters to be more flexible and easier to use than any current leading traditional standard forms of contract. It is believed that these features reduce adversariality and disputes. The NEC seeks to achieve this aim primarily through co-operative management techniques and incentives built into the NEC's procedures. This commentary analyses and evaluates these and related claims of innovation. The New Engineering Contract: A legal commentary examines the background to the NEC, its design objectives, structure, procedures and likely judicial interpretation to determine whether it improves upon the traditional standard forms of contract. Special attention is given in the commentary to the development and the significance of the principles underlying preparation of the NEC as well as the arguments in favour of and against them.Throughout the detailed commentary upon the NEC clauses comparisons to the traditional forms are also made to highlight unique features and principles of general application. The conclusion reached is that the NEC does make a significant contribution to the development of standard forms of contract, addresses many of their short comings and offers one of the best models for their future development, direction and design. The commentary draws upon the body of the project management literature and legal analysis to support its conclusions. The New Engineering Contract: A legal commentary will be essential reading for lawyers, barristers and solicitors, as well as engineers and project managers.

Explore big ideas with the Science Advocate in Chief through this collection of insights, reflections, and tips. Compiled from a career that spans over 25 years and more than 65 patents, Dr. Jayshree Seth discusses our relationship with science, technology, and engineering while offering her unique perspective on topics surrounding advocacy, interdisciplinary contexts, dynamic leadership, and inclusive progress.