Engineering Management Institute

UPCOMING WEBINAR

Climb Every Mountain: Great Song, Bad Strategy

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This is a guest post by Christian Haring of Harbor Compliance

If you’re like me, when it comes to things like growing your business and expanding your capabilities, your go-to position is, “Yes, we can!” It’s part of the sales personality: we think positive. Yet too much of that can-do, climb-every-mountain spirit can sap your teams, and eventually you’ll see the evidence in numbers like sales, utilization rates, and overhead burden.

One of the best ways to improve your numbers is to focus your firm’s finite time and resources on what you do best. Knowing what to outsource, and when, is a key part of that equation for firms of all sizes.

Many firms we speak to are unaware that they can outsource business licensing and entity management. In fact, firms that outsource these functions to us routinely enjoy returns of 30X and up. How? Let me walk you through the factors and how they relate to AEC firms.

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80/20 Principle as One of the Most Effective Ways to Increase Your Productivity

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80/20 Principle as One of the Most Effective Ways to
Increase Your Productivity is a guest post by Samantha R. Gilbert80/20 Principle

In 1895, Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian economist, became aware that people could be divided into two groups. The first one was the “vital few” that made up the top 20% regarding influence and money, and the second referred to the “trivial many” that made up the bottom 80% of the population. Then, he realized that all economic management reflected this principle, that 20% of the population controlled 80% of the Italian capital in that period. Pareto asserted that this principle could be implemented everywhere. Practically, the rule suggests that 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your outcomes.  Therefore, this means you can apply this rule to enhance your productivity and achieve your goals in less time. Just follow these five steps and learn how to apply the 80/20 principle in your life.

80/20 Principle
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How to Cultivate Excellent Professional Relationships

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How to Cultivate Excellent Professional Relationships is a blog post by guest author Patrick Sweet, P.Eng., MBA

Professional Relationships

Professional relationships are key to success in any profession. Engineering is no exception. Success is fueled as much by who you know as it is by what you know. While this may seem unfair, there’s a perfectly logical reason for this: people do business with people they know, like, and trust. And how do you get people to know, like, and trust you? Through relationships.

Today, I’m going to share five actions you can take to cultivate excellent professional relationships. All of these strategies are simple, and anyone can implement them, regardless of where you are in your career, or what industry you work in. All of them will help others to get to know, like, and trust you.

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Building Real Friendships That Can Get Engineers Hired

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This is a guest post by Nader Mowlaee

Real Friendships

It might sound contrary to the idea of career professionalism but building real friendships can and will get you hired. In fact, if you’re not making friends when you network, you’re not doing it properly.

Networking is the most powerful job search strategy because it will lead to getting referred in for jobs that aren’t yet advertised, meaning you’ll have much less or no competition going into the interview process.

Building real friendships works extremely well when they’re based on genuine attraction and interest; think about this not as ‘what someone can do for you,’ but rather, ‘what you can do for someone else’ without expecting anything back. That’s how you make a new friend. Help without expecting anything back. Genuine friendships always make sense and feel good when they originate, and they will always pay off in the long run.

Real Friendships

Build Real Friendships That Are Genuine

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Good Engineers Practice: Skills to Advance Your Career

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This is a guest post by Kyle K. Cheerangie, P.E.
Practice

As a younger engineer I occasionally spent time doing the wrong things. My eagerness caused me to accept tasks and work with unconfirmed assumptions. This lead to repeat work and disappointment from my mangers. My focus was on activity, not results.

Keeping a journal helped me learned that I was spending much of my time doing tasks that did not contribute to my team. The best engineers perform the necessary tasks and delegate or eliminate the unnecessary.

Practice

For example, spending weeks to create a report with multiple iterations for comments and changes, when a simple technical memorandum would suffice. Young engineers typically experience challenges like this one and most managers don’t have the heart to say, “No! This is not what I want.”

Learn and practice these skills to improve: 

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Who Are Quantity Surveyors and Why Are They Important?

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This is a guest post by Mike Johnston
Quantity Surveyors

Civil engineering is a discipline many people are not really familiar with. This is a real shame since civil engineering impacts our society so much. Namely, it comprises various professions, including structural, geotechnical, environmental, water resources, construction management, and transportation engineers.

One particularly interesting area is quantity surveying, a profession that blends engineering, construction, and economics. The emphasis is on the last part, albeit there are many other tasks that these experts perform.

Word up

To avoid any confusion, let us just provide a quick clarification of terminology.

Those who live in Canada or the US might have heard the term construction cost estimator.  On the other hand, a quantity surveyor is widely used in countries like UK and Australia. The roles of the two are more or less similar depending on the region. For instance, a construction cost estimator in the US is equivalent to a quantity surveyor in the UK, even though there are some extra requirements for each one.

Sometimes, the terms cost managers and cost consultants get thrown around. But, in this article, we are going to use only quantity surveyor, though in a broader sense that transcends local and project-to-project differences.

What do surveyors do?

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How to Use the PSI Framework to Sell Yourself in a Job Interview

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How to Use the PSI Framework is a guest post by Nader Mowlaee
PSI

PSI stands for more than just “pounds per square inch” when inflating tires. It also stands for a meaningful way to enhance your value to a potential new or existing employer, especially during job interviews.

The PSI framework is also a great method you can use on the job to sell a project, product or idea to just about anyone. It’s an amazing tool to convince engineering leaders and managers that there is a problem needing to be addressed and that your solution is the best way to fix the issue.

P – Problem

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Have You Heard of the S.O.A.R Method?

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Have You Heard of the S.O.A.R Method is a guest blog by Thomas Anderson, P.E.

S.O.A.R

How do you prepare for an interview? Do you read typical questions that the employer might ask? Do you practice artful responses? The S.O.A.R. Answer Method is helpful for preparing for interview questions and it keeps you focused on the discussion while you are answering.

This answer method works well on interview questions 11 and 15 on an article called Top 20 Interview Questions and How to Answer

The S.O.A.R. Method Explained:

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From Civil Engineer to Manager – Anthony Fasano Featured on Recent ASCE Interchange Video

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Engineering Management Institute (EMI) President Anthony Fasano, P.E. was recently featured in an American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Interchange Video entitled From Civil Engineer to Manager.  ASCE Interchange is a multi-part series of educational videos on important issues in the engineering community produced by ASCE.

In each monthly 6- to 7-minute segment, Casey Dinges, ASCE’s senior managing director of public affairs, membership, and marketing, engages experts and other leading voices in interviews from the studios of LAI Video in Washington, DC.

Here is Fasano’s full October 2018 ASCE Interchange video…

In this video Fasano answers the following questions:

  1. Civil engineers at most firms, usually early in their careers, must decide whether they want to take the technical path or the management path. How does an engineer decide or know which way they should go?
  2. If the civil engineer has decided they want to take the management path, what are some ways the engineer can show their boss they are ready to manage?
  3. What skills do you think a civil engineer must have to be a manager? Of those, which three skill do you think are the most important?
  4. If they don’t have these skills, how can they develop these skills?
  5. What’s the difference between a manager and a leader?
  6. Are there any good books or podcasts you’d recommend that provide more insight into managing?

This is Fasano’s second ASCE Interchange Video.  His first, which published in January of 2016 here, covered recruiting and hiring trends in civil engineering and has had over 11,000 views to date.

About Engineering Management Institute, Inc. – Engineering Management Institute, Inc. is a coaching and training company based in Ridgewood, New Jersey.  Founded in 2009, Engineering Management Institute has inspired thousands of engineers through its various content channels which include written articles, podcasts and videos.  The company and its founder has been cited on many major media outlets including CNN, Mashable, and mostly recently Forbes.

 

For Engineering Firms, It Takes More Than Talent to Win

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For Engineering Firms, It Takes More Than Talent to Win is a guest post by Christian HaringTalent

You’ve got plenty of talent and depth on your bench, and your sales team is doing a great job putting together compelling proposals. Yet too often, your team is cut in the final round, or turned away before you’ve even had a chance to show what you’re capable of. If you’ve been in this business for any length of time, you know every play can’t be a touchdown. Yet if you find yourself going up against the same competitors over and over again, or pursuing projects that aren’t an ideal fit, there’s one way to refresh that pipeline and win more business that few engineering firms appreciate or exploit. In fact, it’s probably the last aspect of your business that you would associate with winning anything, let alone new business: regulatory compliance.

Whether you see it as a growth driver or not, licensing and entity management are basically the playing field you provide for your business development teams. And at key moments throughout your firm’s corporate lifecycle, licensing influences your playbook as well, affecting agility, profitability, and performance long after the contracts are signed. By creating a favorable regulatory playing field, equipping your team, and embracing the power of compliance to enhance your brand, you can position your firm to win more of the projects you really want.

Own the Field

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