You hold a doctorate of philosophy? You’re a professor? Doctor? Much respect for the hustle. But papers do not pour concrete. Titles do not stop roads from cracking. Experience does. Dust does. Scars do. Let me teach you with receipts. Most people ask me about my Old Boys (OBs), and I respond by demonstrating my practical skills rather than discussing theoretical human history. Recently, I reconnected with one of my OBs Eng Isaac Menya, whom I last saw 35 years ago. Other OBs such as Apollo Mugomba are long dead. Another one, Robinson Yebalibinga, has remained unaccounted for in the USA for 40 years. Meanwhile, a one Walusimbi, who abandoned the course in the first year to settle as a businessman in Owino market, is an extremely wealthy man. Let me take you back to Year Two, the fluid mechanics topic. The lecturer walks in; he held a PhD in hydraulics and took us through the Bernoulli principles like it was poetry. Pumps, turbines, head loss. We all excelled in our performance. Then the government gave him the opportunity to head the National Housing and Construction Company (NHCC). The result? He was unable to even set a plinth wall. He could not read a bricklayer. He failed. He struggled because books didn’t teach him how soil behaves after rain. Books didn’t teach him how to shout “mortar!” at 6 am. Sight humbled him. In my Year II engineering mathematics III session, the tutor was an associate professor from Malindi, Kenya. Young and vibrant. He could model vibrations in four dimensions. He was later appointed permanent secretary, ministry of Works in Kenya. The result was the realization that ministries are not matrices. He crashed miserably. He could not integrate a contractor’s excuses. He could not differentiate corruption. Potholes aren’t concerned about your publications. Pressure, procurement, politics; that is a different syllabus. Now flip it. Let me take you to the desert. Namibia has a government company called RCC. While working for them, my boss, Eng Chigwedere, a PhD engineer trained in Germany, sat me down, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, and asked me a killer question: “Draw and explain the formation of gravel and bitumen roads.” Twenty minutes later, I had a full cross- section on paper. I narrated it like I built it yesterday. Why? Because I had eaten dust in Naduget, Karamoja, on the Akisim road. I had burned under the Manyata sun and watched rain wash away a month’s work. His smirk disappeared. GO DEEPER INTO HISTORY The legendary Eng James Zikusoka only held a bachelor’s in Engineering but laid out all Jinja city roads with a theodolite, chain and guts. He designed the Sironko- to-Kapchorwa road through mountains using slide rules. We still drive on his brain. Buses and vehicles full of PhD holders use his grades. We shall always remember him. Then there is my blood relative, Livingstone Naidoo Mukasa, a holder of a Higher Diploma in Civil Engineering from the 1950s. But he was the main brain behind the Owen Falls dam bridge. While professors were debating concrete theory in London, he was calculating cofferdams on the Nile with a pencil and guts. Seventy years later, that bridge still carries your fuel trucks. That is power and legacy. NEW RECEIPT FOR ENGINEERS Back in 2011, a contractor offered $20,000 per month to an engineer with a PhD from overseas for a construction project. He drew a beautiful tower, perfect on paper. However, when the first-floor slab was poured, it sagged 200mm overnight. Why? He had never worked with black cotton soil and never respected it. His junior, Sikola Odong, took one look and advised, “This soil eats buildings.” Odong underpinned it with mass concrete and saved the job. The PhD holder was sent home and Odong got promoted. So, here is the teaching: school gives you the map. Experience teaches you to drive in the rain, at night, with no headlights. A PhD holder can explain water flow in a pipe, but a fundi knows which valve to kick at 2am before the village floods. Ultimately, I consistently stress to everyone, particularly to my sons Eng Romeo George Kasekende and Eng Clive Benedicto Misagga, that education is theoretical. Experience is truth wrapped in sweat. Education tells you what a retaining wall is. Experience teaches you how it screams before it collapses and when to run. Education is a library. Experience is the battlefield. So, if you are hiring, if you are building, if you are choosing who to trust with your millions, do not chase the title on the business card. Chase the calluses on your hands. Look for the scars, mud on the boots, gray hair from site stress and experience over education. Books talk, papers talk and titles talk but experience walks into the site at 5 am and gets it done. Your PhD can calculate the load but my hands can feel when it is about to fail. Zikusoka only had a degree, yet he successfully built cities. In this profession, your CV is what you have built, not what you have read. The author is an investor, contractor, and football enthusiast.The post Experience is the master of your life, not a frame on the wall appeared first on The Observer Media Ltd.