Engineering Management Institute

UPCOMING WEBINAR

Why Engineers Might Consider Opportunities in Construction Fields

By

This is a guest blog by Holly Welles

Construction Fields

The automotive, aeronautical and electronics industries are all popular among engineering graduates, however, as a recent graduate, it’s essential to explore the full spectrum of possibilities. While you likely have preferences and priorities, you shouldn’t limit yourself by your expectations. There’s no set path you need to follow.

With this in mind, you should consider seeking opportunities within the construction field. It’s an excellent field for engineers, and there’s always demand for professionals with a specific set of skills and abilities. More than that, the necessity of construction ensures its value far into the future.

Presently, you might be curious about what engineering in construction fields entails. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the subject, touching on three reasons why you should research the industry and review your options. Consider the following…

[Read more…]

Good Engineers Practice: Skills to Advance Your Career

By

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: 

[Read more…]

5 Key Skills You Can Build to Manage Conflict in the Workplace

By

5 Key Skills You Can Build to Manage Conflict in the Workplace
is a guest blog by Walter Bodell

Manage Conflict

Conflict is an inevitable part of life. People with the healthiest relationships, both personally and professionally, understand and recognize this fact. Rather than trying to simply avoid conflict, they learn to manage conflict and work through it. Developing good conflict resolution skills for the workplace is possibly one of the most important things you can do to create a healthy working environment both for yourself and for others. By learning to manage and resolve conflict in the workplace, you can make yourself an invaluable part of almost any team. Here are 5 critical elements to you can use to manage conflict in the workplace.

[Read more…]

3 Things You Need to Know to Engineer Resolution

By

Engineer ResolutionOne thing that is certain to happen in your engineering career is conflict.  This isn’t because the engineering profession is more prone to conflict than accounting or that engineers tend to be a contentious lot.  It’s because, as in any profession, you’ll find people.  Wherever there are people you will find conflict.  Because of this, it’s important to develop a basic understanding of the three things you need to know to engineer resolution.

[Read more…]

Are you Focused on Moving your Engineering Career Forward, Every Day?

By

Are you Focused on Moving your Engineering Career Forward, Every Day?

Engineering Career ForwardOdds are if you’re like most engineers, you show up at work each day, solve problems, go home, and then come back the next day and repeat that process.  Obviously, I am simplifying things here.  Within that, ‘solve problems’ generalization, lie thousands of amazing projects, inventions, and solutions that move our world forward.  Engineers create extraordinary things. But what career-related items do you partake in outside of your engineering projects, and how you do you decide when or why to execute them and move your engineering career forward?

[Read more…]

Can You Explain Your Engineering Career Goals While Standing On One Leg?

By

Can You Explain Your Engineering Career Goals While Standing On One Leg?Career Goals

As we begin another calendar year, I would urge you to think deeply about your professional career goals for the upcoming year, but also beyond that.  What do you want to accomplish in your engineering career?  What does your career look like from a big picture perspective?  Could you explain it succinctly if I asked you to?

There are several fables around the idea of being able to describe something while standing on one leg, basically suggesting that this would force you to be concise and focus on the most important aspects of the thing you are attempting to explain.

Therefore, I want to challenge you to do this in your own engineering career.

[Read more…]

Five Tips for Smooth Engineering Career Transitions

By

5 Tips for Smooth Engineering Career Transitions is a blog post by Carol Evenson

Career TransitionsSwitching engineering jobs isn’t as easy as switching car gears. There’s a lot of paperwork and bureaucratic red tape involved, a lot of re-training, and of course, the awkward handing in of your two weeks notice followed by the dozens of goodbyes from your coworkers. Nonetheless, this shouldn’t scare you into pursuing what you are truly passionate about. Here are five tips to help you iron out smooth career transitions:

1. Don’t Quit Prematurely

[Read more…]

Early Life as an Engineer and my path to Entrepreneurship

By

This is a guest blog post by Hamed Layssi, P.Eng, PhD

Early Life as an Engineer I started my bachelor’s in civil engineering in 2001, more than 15 years ago. I wanted to become a civil engineer, design new roads, buildings, power plants, and fancy high-rise buildings. “Design” is a core concept in the civil engineering curriculum, where students learn to calculate loads, predict capacities, and optimize their precise solutions in very specific cases. In doing so, they become familiar with another concept, “risk”.  In school, engineering students learn how to identify risk, quantify it, and attempt to minimize it within their design.

As for precision, it is an important aspect of every engineering solution. Every great design, whether it is a high-rise building, a modern vehicle, or a personal computer is built with precision in mind. A perfect design has precision in every detail, from aesthetics to core functions.

Early Life as an Engineer

Another aspect of life as a civil engineer is learning to work as a team member. Visit any engineering office or construction site, and you will realize how important effective teamwork is in engineering. I remember that during the second year of my studies, I teamed up with three of my classmates to enter into a concrete cube competition, organized by the American Concrete Institute (ACI). We spent the entire summer of 2003 working on our concrete cube samples in a materials laboratory. Working with my friends helped me to develop strong teamwork, and project management skills. [Read more…]

Recognizing the Time for Change in your Engineering Career

By

This is a guest post by Patrick Sweet, P.Eng.

Recognizing the Time for Change
How do you know when it’s time to move on from your engineering job?

It’s something that most of us have asked ourselves at some point in our careers, or will at some time in the future. Earlier this week, a coaching client asked me what I thought. Honestly, I didn’t have a solid answer right away and it has been bugging me ever since.

Recognizing the Time for Change

I believe that recognizing the time for change is a key skill that engineering professionals need in order to progress successfully through their careers. Today, having had a chance to think about it, I’d like to share my thoughts on how to tell it’s time to move on. [Read more…]

5 Tips To Move Beyond Being A Perfectionist In Your Engineering Career

By

This is Part V of a six-part series about leadership for engineers preparing for their first professional leadership role.

Perfectionist

Hi, I’m Chris and I’m a recovering perfectionist.  It all started when, well, when I was a young child.  Blame it on genetics, but I’m afflicted with the ‘perfectionist-gene’; the necessity for every action, every event, and every aspect to be just…perfect.

It’s come in handy in some cases, like developing a logistics plan with numerous stakeholders, target dates, and high stakes outcomes or putting on a 400-plus person multi-national event with a lot of senior leaders.  Perfection, or a close facsimile of it, is necessary in some cases.  However, it isn’t in most cases.

For those with a perfectionist streak running in them, entering the engineering profession simply reinforces their natural slant towards an error-free life.  This was the case for me, and then I added a career in the military on top of it and my preference for perfection was locked

Unfortunately, while there’s a time and place for perfection it doesn’t apply to all situations and at all times. [Read more…]