[R Bohannan]

Working in the defense industry, I've seen several cases where being "1/4 inch" out of spec would cause you to be thrown off of a plane, made to change/fix it, and probably sued. (Anyone from Lockheed remember the contract they signed where the contracts people didn't convert from British currency to American?). To me, the most important part of engineering is precision - crossing all the T's and dotting all the I's. Although most of us don't enjoy the attention to detail, it is a discriminator that shows the differences between good engineering and bad engineering.

The innovation that happens in a research or college laboratory is usually different than what goes on in a production environment. You can get away with "bending" the rules when you are only building one item as a demonstration. You get put out of business when building thousands or millions of items that don't meet the requirements of the customers.

So, to me the real question is this - Is FIRST about inspiring kids to innovate, which may include pushing the rules envelope? Or is it to instill good engineering practices that will provide the world with proficient engineers in the future? My guess is that the good teams out there will say BOTH - and I agree.

Now, getting off my soapbox, I would also find it hard to throw the teams out in many of the above examples. So here's my solution - provide a set penalty for infractions. If they are a 1/4" oversize or 1/2 lb overweight, they lose some quantity of points per round. Now, just like everything in engineering, they have a trade-off, do they spend all day getting rid of their violation, or do they live with it and lose points? Obviously, a safety violation would have to be fixed prior to competing.

Looking into my crystal ball, my solution would probably cause a huge uproar about penalties, judging, etc. Especially since the teams will be able to intentionally violate the rules if it plays into their strategy.......I had a thought, but I won't go there.
Maybe it's not so great afterall....