Engineering Management Institute

how to become a successful engineer

What to Do in Your Engineering Career When You Don’t Know What to Do

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Flexibility in Your Engineering Career Development

This post was inspired by a recent conversation that I had with one of our Institute for Engineering Career Development (IECD) members. She is a young engineer and not sure what direction to go in her engineering career. She is considering various questions, such as:

What specific discipline in her engineering field should she go into?

What types of projects does she actually want to work on, on a daily basis?

What kind of master’s degree should she pursue?

What will make her happy in her engineering career?

These are all important questions to be considering in your engineering career development, and to be honest, it’s quite scary to have to deal with them all at such a young age. What happens if you answer one of them wrong? What if you go into a discipline and don’t like it? What if you get the wrong master’s degree?

My recommendation for anyone who is dealing with questions like these would be to try to build FLEXIBILITY into your engineering career development plan. Try to take steps that help you to develop but still leave you open to other possibilities. Here are a few ideas of how to implement flexibility into your career: [Read more…] about What to Do in Your Engineering Career When You Don’t Know What to Do

At The End of Your Engineering Career Will You Say I Wish I Hadn’t Worked so Hard

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What do you usually think about how you would like to finish your engineering career? Would you like to finish your engineering career as an expert in your profession but without personal experience? Today we talk about what many people often regret at some point in their lives…

An engineer that I met during one of my speaking engagements in Chicago recently sent me the link to an article entitled Top Five Regrets of the Dying.  He thought I would find it interesting and he was right!

The article is based on a book where a nurse reveals the top regrets that her dying patients have shared with her about their lives and careers.  I believe that all five of the top regrets are tied into your career in some way, shape or form and it was one them that really hit home for me:

I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

“This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their [Read more…] about At The End of Your Engineering Career Will You Say I Wish I Hadn’t Worked so Hard

Selecting an Engineering Company: Does Size Matter?

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Last week I attended the 11th annual ASCE Younger Member CEO forum at Columbia University in New York City. The topic for the evening was: Selecting an Engineering Company: Does Size Matter? There was a panel consisting of high-level executives from some of the largest companies in the world as well as some smaller engineering companies. The panel included: Jack Buchsbaum, Assistant Chief engineer at the Port Authority of NY/NJ (PANYNJ), Neal Forshner. Sr. Vice President at AECOM, Neil Lucy, Senior Vice President at Parsons Brinckerhoff, Joseph Tortorella, Vice President at Robert Silman Associates, and Theodore von Rosenvinge, President at GeoDesign.

The president of the lower Hudson Valley ASCE Chase De Rose started out the night by stressing the importance of finding a mentor in your engineering career. In fact, the word mentor seemed to be a recurring theme throughout the evening in the panel members’ responses. Once the panel began, younger engineers had the opportunity to ask these executives questions about working in big or small engineering companies.  Deciding between a big or small engineering company can be a critical decision in your engineering career development.

One engineer asked the executives to give their opinion on how much harder it may be to stand out in a larger company.  Most of the panel members responded by saying it was up to the individual to engineer their own success in their career.  They’re general response was that regardless of the size of the firm, it’s your career and it’s up to you to take ownership of it and develop it.  They did not think that the size of the firm would greatly affect how much you stood out.  In fact, some of the executives of the larger companies even said that it might be easier to stand out at a larger company because of the magnitude of the projects that you’re going to work on.  This makes sense because while at a smaller engineering company, you may work on a project that’s the biggest project that company has ever seen, however at a larger company you may work on a revolutionary project that may be one of the biggest in the world.  In both cases you have a great opportunity to stand out and build a strong reputation in the engineering industry. [Read more…] about Selecting an Engineering Company: Does Size Matter?

From Design Engineer to Manager in 2012 – You Can Do It!

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I have received many questions recently through the different social media outlets to the effect of, “How do I go from design engineer to manager in my engineering career?”

It’s a great question and one that many engineers ask.  In my career travels as a design engineer, and the last few years as an Engineering Management Institute, I have worked with, coached, and spoken to many engineers about this topic specifically and in this post I want to offer some engineering career advice based on my experiences.

In talking with many successful engineers that have made the transition from design engineer to manager, here are some guidelines that may be helpful in your transition:

Learn How to Delegate

What do I mean by learn how to delegate?  Well I could have just said, start delegating, but many successful engineers will tell you that it’s not that easy.  As engineers we get so wrapped up in day to day technical aspects of projects that when it’s time to go take on a managerial role, we either don’t want to give up the technical tasks to someone else or we are so involved in our projects, it is hard to take a more “hands-off” role.

Many engineers have the mentality of,  “I want to do it to ensure it gets done correctly.  That’s understandable being that you are a competent project manager, however to make a transition from engineer to manager, you are going to have to let other people help you.  You are going to have to take the time to teach them how to do it, in order to free up your time for other things.  The best way to do this is to start by giving small tasks to your team members to let them gain your trust.  Once they build up your trust, you will feel more comfortable giving them larger tasks until you can remove yourself from the “trenches” and take on more of a managerial role. [Read more…] about From Design Engineer to Manager in 2012 – You Can Do It!