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In this episode of The Engineering Quality Control podcast, I talk about a five-part framework for quality control for engineering professionals and discuss the first part of this framework, known as Gather.
This is an article by John M. Lowe, Jr., P.E., speaker for our upcoming Civil Engineering Collective session: Manage Your Projects to Meet Your Clients’ Expectations, which you can find here.
Hardly anything has a greater influence on how we perceive being successful in life than how we meet the expectations of others and how well they meet ours. In our professional life, nowhere else is this more applicable than in the client/consultant relationship.
The official measure of success frequently comes at the end of a project when each party evaluates how well their expectations have been met. The goal, of course, is for both parties to conclude that all of their expectations have been met. This is possible, but only with considerable attention being paid by both parties throughout the entire project. And it can only occur when each party has a clear understanding of what the other party expects. While the responsibility for managing this process is shared by both parties, most of the day-to-day effort usually falls to the consultant.
The first opportunity for the client’s expectations to be established occurs when the consultant submits their Statement of Qualification (SOQ) to the client during the selection process. The consultant wants the client to have a favorable impression of the consultant’s qualifications, but care must be taken to not overstate its qualifications, thereby creating an unattainable expectation of the consultant’s performance. In some cases when this happens, clients become disappointed when its expectations based on the SOQ have not been met. On future projects, they may require that the SOQ be attached and made a part of the contract for professional design services. Then, if the consultant’s performance is not consistent with its SOQ, the client may declare that the consultant is in default.
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As I sit to write a blog about People Disappointment Management 101, I hear the song “God Is Great, Beer Is Good, and People Are Crazy” playing on the radio. At first, the song was nothing more than a typical country song about life with a country play on word humor. I heard this song many times, but it wasn’t until this time in my life, which is filled with an abundance of fear and unknowns, that I heard this song differently. I believe this song represents the best way to explain People Disappointment Management 101.
I believe that our disappointments lie within our expectations of an event or person. When our expectations are not met, we create a narrative that validates that we are “right” and the event/person is “wrong.”
I am an engineer who lives for data points. This model works great for me because I continuously find data to prove my disappointment as accurate. From an ego standpoint, this works very well because all the narratives that I’ve lived by or believed made me “right.” However, what I learned through my 20-plus years of living according to a spreadsheet is that many past relationships ended in my life with the other person walking away defeated. Hey, but I won — or did I?
There was a time in my life that I knew I needed to change the way that I lived — that it no longer served me and I was ready for a “Cool Change” (another great song!). I started on this journey into uncharted territory and found that there was a whole new way of living, and it could help me to create the life I was desperately searching for.
For me, it started with being able to manage my disappointments in people. There are three key standards specific to personal relationships that we choose to live our lives in, and they tie right back to “God Is Great, Beer Is Good, and People Are Crazy.”
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In episode 082 of The Civil Engineering Podcast, I talk with Alexis Clark, E.I.T about her passion for culture and community in civil engineering, and several other interesting topics related to Civil Engineering.
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