Engineers vs. IT

I work at a university for a subset of Civil Engineering: Traffic Engineering. I'm just a lowly tech person, so I make websites and maintain computers and take orders from PhD's and Engineers. In case I haven't made it clear enough, to engineers it seems anyone who isn't an engineer is lower class citizen. And pretty stupid at that. I really have a problem with this. Not because I think I'm smarter than them at traffic engineering, but because I KNOW I'm smarter than them at technical stuff.

Now traffic engineering has been stepping into the world of technology with Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and these poor engineers don't really have any idea. They seem to be taking baby steps and I think it's because of their opinion toward IT people, or non-engineers. For example, I met the technical support manager for Econolite, a major manufacturer of ITS equipment. He was really excited because their new software (version 9, just released this May) has IP support. "This means you can configure the cameras from anywhere!" he excitedly tells me. Yeah! That's the point of the internet! Up until then, you actually have had to go to the camera and connect to it with a laptop and a serial cable.

Now obviously this is a great idea, but it was still implemented pretty poorly. The webapp was clunky and written in Java. (The cool thing is since he's pretty high up, he's got some powers. I asked him if they developed in house and when he said yes, I suggested AJAX. 5 minutes later he tells me he sent an email to the developers suggesting it.) So what I'm wondering is, how much sooner would they have had IP connections to their cameras if it were IT people working on this instead of engineers?

Another example: I was reading about some plans for a particular city for phasing in their cameras. They have 300-ish cameras set up and only 20 some are being used. Their problem is they are using dial up to access the cameras. They want to set up a wireless mesh network between the lights for connectivity instead. Very cool idea. The problem they're running into is the project has come in way over budget for them. Now, this university I work for has another project from a different college (not engineering, but IT) which is trying to supply wireless networks around the city. Hmm... seems like a match made in heaven doesn't it?? Well, the engineering PhD's here didn't seem to thing so and threw a royal fit when that college tried to pair up with the city.

How much farther would we be if we could all just get along? How many other groups are separated by stupid ego issues and could have advanced so much farther if they just worked together?