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10 Great Benefits of Using a Project Plan in Your Engineering Career

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10 Great Benefits of Using a Project Plan in Your Engineering Career is a blog post by Chris Richardson

Project PlanEvery professional engineer must treat his projects seriously by allocating enough time to planning and organizing future actions. A project plan is useful not just for improving the quality of the end product, but also for developing better team dynamics and better results for the company you’re working for.

In today’s post, we’re discussing 10 great benefits that will result from proper project planning. Every engineer should acknowledge that a project plans’ quality will always be directly proportional to the quality of the results. 

1. In-Depth Planning, Thinking, and Visualizing 

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Engineering Project Success Depends on You

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This is the last installment of six-part series about leadership for engineers preparing for their first professional leadership role.

Engineering Project Success Depends on YouNot every project you undertake as a leader is going to work out, sometimes you may find yourself having to make the decision to pull the plug.  You may already have seen this in your engineering career and if not, you will.

According to Project Management Institute (PMI), only 62% of projects met their original goals and business intent.  PMI’s analysis of projects worldwide reveals that for every $1 billion spent in projects, $135 million was at risk from failure.  Put another way, 13.5% of every project dollar you will touch is at risk.

As an engineering leader, you’re responsible as much for engineering project success and protection of resources as you are for your team’s performance.  In fact, in most organizations failure to deliver projects within cost, on time, and within scope on a consistent basis will result in a sacking.  However, sometimes a project will far exceed resources or require someone new with the skills to get it back on track.

As a leader, you’re responsible for maintaining awareness about your projects and knowing when to cut losses and cancel a project or ask for help from an outside entity who can get the project back on track.

Engineers Create Success with Performance Measurement and Risk Assessment

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Creating a Project Portfolio to Boost Your Engineering Career

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Project PortfolioOne thing that engineers and project managers have in common, regardless their industry or focus, is the need to access their personal project history.  This point is being driven home for me currently as I apply for Project Management Institute’s Program Management Professional Certification® exam. The application – like those you’ll complete for the P.E., Project Management Professional (PMP), or the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) – will require you to provide project- and/or program-specific information: who, what, when, where, and how.

If you have that information locked in your long-term memory and can access it at will, you’re set!

For the rest of us, however, total recall isn’t a reality.  While our long-term memory is nearly limitless, our short-term memory is only capable of managing a handful of items. Also, as time goes by, the validity and specificity of one’s memories of the type of details needed for a P.E. exam or job application will wane.

The answer then? Develop and maintain a project portfolio.

Project Portfolio

Setting Up Your Reflection Process

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TECC 132: Building Project Management into your Engineering Career

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

project managementIn this episode, Chris Knutson, PE will answer some questions from listeners and give advice on why engineers should consider studying and learning about project management. He will also expand on why project management will be good for your engineering career, as well as your engineering organization.

Engineering Success quotes:

project management

project management

Here are the key points from this episode on Project Management for Engineers:

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Learn about Project Management to Enhance Your Engineering Career

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Project ManagementWhether you want to become a project manager or not, you’ll be running a project at some point in your life and in one of your capacities.  It might be in the role you hold at your firm, or in the role you occupy in a technical or professional organization, or even a role you fill in a community group.  The point is, many of activities we undertake are projects.  That is, they are what Project Management International (PMI) defines as a, temporary in that it has a defined beginning and end in time, and therefore defined scope and resources.  A project is unique in that it is not a routine operation, but a specific set of operations designed to accomplish a singular goal.


So the question is, do you want to approach your management of these projects in life half-assed, or with a framework that will make your management of the project more efficient?

Before I dive into one possible answer to this question (the option I’ll suggest is one worth following!), I’m not advocating earning a credential, certificate or degree in project management.  I don’t believe a practicing engineering professional must earn one of these to be proficient in applying project management concepts to efficiently bring about intended benefits to the customers and clients they serve.  What I do believe, is that one cannot leave development of a methodology of project management to on-the-job training or simple observation.

Learning about project management by osmosis might make you proficient, however, I doubt it.  Relying on casual observation to learn, internalize, and then apply knowledge in a fashion that enhances ones proficiency in any topic is a path that’s fraught with long lead-time.  Simply put, you’re going to get a better return on investment of time if you actively study project management methodology and know the basic concepts.

So how is knowing project management concepts going to make you a better engineer?

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Why Working Less on Your Projects Can Improve Engineering and Project Management Efforts

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There is a stereotype in the engineering world that I would like to disprove and that is, to be successful in your engineering and project management efforts you have to work a TON of hours.  I think this is totally false, and I think that this stereotype is causing a lot of engineering and project management professionals to burn out.

I recently had a discussion with a very successful engineering company owner and he actually told me that he tries to do the opposite.  He hires really good staff, so that he can work less and enjoy life more.  Yes, he actually said that.

I believe that one way to improve the quality of your engineering and project management work is to work less.  Yes, work less.  Here are 5 reasons/steps why and how you can improve your engineering and project management work by working less.

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5 Reasons Accountability Is Needed for Success On The Big Engineering Projects

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(TECC 150505) AccountabilityAccountability is one characteristic that is present every time success is realized on a big engineering project or any project undertaking.  Think about the major goals you’ve accomplished in your personal life and your engineering career.  University work entails accountability – exams, papers or projects, and semester grades.  With the F.E. or P.E. exams, it’s the pre-tests and then the actual exam itself.  In working on engineering projects, we find project schedules, work breakdown structures, and stakeholder milestone update reports.

In our professional endeavors accountability exists to ensure that standards are being maintained and that work is being accomplished according to an agreed upon timeline.  Without accountability, where does the motivation come from?

Why We Need Accountability to Be Successful

In the ideal world each of us has the self-discipline to deliver the goods in every situation.  But the fact is, in the engineering world we don’t.  That’s why people and project teams fall short of challenging goals.  It’s why over 60% of people who start a new year’s resolution fall off the wagon within a month.  It’s why I look forward to February in the gym every year…no need to wait for equipment to free up. [Read more…]

9 Steps to Get A Project Back On Track

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No project lasts first contact with reality, just like no military plan lasts first contact with the enemy. It isn’t because there’s a lack of good engineers and project managers. No, it’s because these good engineers and project managers didn’t properly assess risk during the planning, design and execution phases. 

Yesterday on Engineering.com I wrote about the need for an engineer leader or project manager to know when to cut their losses on a failing project. Project Management Institute in their 2013 “Pulse of the Profession” revealed that nearly 37% of all major project fail. On $1 billion in major projects, $135 million is at risk meaning that 13.5% of every project $1 you’re responsible for is at risk.

That’s a lot of risk. And after seeing reports like this one about a major construction project off schedule, severely over budget, and embroiled in a political scandal; one quickly sees that there has to be a better way for an engineer leader to make certain that if they have a project off vector, they can get it back on vector ASAP. 

Use a 9-Line to Get Support

The Army uses what’s called a “nine-line medevac” request process to call in rotary-wing air support for the injured. The very existence of the process is because the Army knows that in the course of doing what it does, there is risk. With that risk, soldiers will be injured and there has to be a standard procedure that every soldier understands for call for help.

The analogy is this: in the course of leading a project there is risk. With that risk, there will be change orders, scope creep, schedule slips and changes in business strategy. In some cases, projects will become so far off course that they will be on the brink of failure. In these situations, the engineer leader needs their own nine-line process to get the project back on vector.

9-Line Project Rescue

Here’s your 9-line project rescue process: [Read more…]

5 Skill’s You Need to Hone to Ensure Successful Project Management

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Effectively managing projects requires several skills and characteristics.  If you’re already a project manager you know that communications, scheduling, leadership and command authority, and the ability to set, observe, and revise priorities frequently are just some of the abilities the successful project mangers employ for success.  While these are important, there are 5 skills that you absolutely need to hone to ensure you’re successful in managing your projects. 

1.  Streamline your work processes.  Nothing saps energy from you and others like poor work processes.  What do poor work processes look like?  Meetings without agendas, run entirely from slide presentations, or held without a clear objective.  Multiple email accounts, calendars, or task lists.  Lack of a process for accepting, vetting, assigning and scheduling tasks.  In short, being unorganized.  Successful project managers are efficient at what they do, why they do something, when they do it, and how they accomplish it. [Read more…]

Note to Engineers: Consider the Project Management Professional Certification

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The Project Management Professional Certification

Project Management Professional Certification

There are several tangible and intangible benefits I’ve realized since earning the Project Management Professional Certification (PMP).

As I contemplated what I needed to do to position myself to leave a twenty-year Air Force career back in 2010, I looked at my professional credentials and experience.  I was already a registered engineer, having earned my license early on in my career.  Since that time I’d earned a master’s degree, held numerous positions of increasing responsibility, and attended several professional military courses.  Despite the education and experience I’d gained, I wasn’t convinced that I had a compelling way of tying it all together for the pending job search.  Sure, I could put it all in a good package and give a 3-minute pitch about my skills.  But I lacked a recognizable standard against which any prospective employer – be they private or public sector – could tell I knew my business.  The answer:  consider the Project Management Professional certification.

Why The Project Management Professional Certification? [Read more…]