The role of engineering advice in policy making: the case of energy policy in the UK

Engineers have a crucial role to play in tackling the grand challenges faced by our societies, for example innovations in energy production to mitigate against climate change. Despite this crucial role, there is a paucity of academic work on engineering advice for policy makers. This article examines the three existing works on engineering advice and two adjacent areas of research – Engineering Studies and policy making in the UK government – to generate theoretical insights into engineering advice deployment. Our literature review distils three questions about the role of engineering advisers and the functioning of the engineering–policy interface. Taking an ethnographic approach, we investigate these questions by focusing on a team of trained engineers and the policy teams they advise within the UK’s energy ministry. Our research findings show how engineering advisers can help frame responses to policy problems. It shows that policy officers, however, do not become the ‘servants’ of engineers, pushing back against their advice if it is not deemed politically acceptable. Despite these challenges, we find that engineering advisers and policy officers progressively develop a common language to collaborate. In this way, our article contributes to the understanding of engineering advice deployment in policy making, as well as offering guidance for practitioners on the skills needed by engineering advisers working in policy.