Picture two engineers who build the exact same water pump in two different villages.

Five years later, the first engineer returns and finds the pump broken and abandoned. The second engineer returns and finds that the pump is also gone, but in its place is a new version, patched together with local wood and scrap metal by the locals themselves. Which engineer actually succeeded?

Technologies are always portrayed as “successful,” yet field observations show that they’re either abandoned or underutilized due to factors like misalignment with local cultural practices, lack of local maintenance capacity due to complex operations, high operational costs, and power dynamics. As a matter of fact, true success is when a technology is genuinely serving community needs and they can maintain its operation, even when they never see the engineer again.

Using the case of Kakamega County, Kenya, imported sugarcane bagasse dryers proved unsustainable due to material and infrastructure misalignment. A dryer from India, originally designed for rice straw, was deployed for sugarcane bagasse drying. While proficient for removing moisture from rice straw, the unique physical properties of sugarcane bagasse– particularly its tendency to expand and contract during heating, the production of methane gas—were unaccounted for, which caused accumulation of the sugarcane waste in the curved internal chambers of the dryer. This led to frequent blockages, monthly explosions, and hazardous fires, eventually leading to the abandonment of the dryer.

Another large-scale rotating dryer from China was deployed in the same county. It proved to be technically effective; however, it required a continuous electricity supply and diesel generators to power rotation. The county’s unreliable power grid and the high fuel costs and operational expenses exceeded revenue, which then rendered the technology unfeasible.

On the bright side, when the University of Huddersfield in England collaborated with Kibabii University, Kenya, a dryer made from the local materials, operable by local technicians and designed using place-based knowledge, was deployed for Kakamega. It not only increased production output but also gave the local stakeholders ownership and trust in the technology. During the commissioning of the dryer, the vice chancellor of Kibabii University, Kenya, in his speech said that the success of the innovation is a testament to the powerful synergy between international expertise and local knowledge in creating solutions that are not only scientifically sound but also socially transformative.

Engineering projects are often approached as if they exist apart from their social and environmental conditions, which leads to the exclusion of the very people that will use the technology from the design processes. Community perspectives represent a form of practical knowledge and shouldn’t be treated as mere comments. People have a clear sense of where risks emerge, which constraints matter most, and what compromises they are willing/unwilling to accept because they live with the outcomes. Furthermore, these perspectives aid in reducing the assumptions that engineers and institutions may not realize they are making, like expectations about costs, responsibility, or improvement. When these assumptions remain unseen or ignored, technology can meet formal targets while slowly losing the support needed to endure.

In a nutshell, a more convincing definition of success goes beyond whether a deployed technological innovation works on paper. Projects succeed when they remain useful over time because people understand them, trust them, and are able to sustain them within real constraints. This standard is more demanding, but it is also more honest about what engineering ultimately aims to achieve.