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Providing Stellar Service to Your Engineering Customers

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This is a guest blog by Pamela A. Scott

Engineering CustomersThink back to the last time you had a marvelous buying experience. It doesn’t matter what you were buying — a car, prescription drugs, or a hot dog. What made that experience stand out for you, the customer?

Now, put yourself in the shoes of your customers. They are the clients who hire you or your firm to provide whatever services you or your firm offer. How would they rate their experience as your customer?

A few years ago, I asked that question to a group of engineering project managers (PMs). Here are a few of dozens of topics they raised related to providing excellent service to their engineering customers:

Questions for Your Clients

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Remember Who You Work For

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This is a guest blog by Mickey Addison, MSCE, PMP

Work ForWhen someone asks a leader who they work for, the best answer is “I work for my team.” That’s obviously not a complete answer, but it speaks to a mindset. Leadership is service, and leaders who approach their roles with that mindset are more likely to be successful. It’s not the complete answer, of course, so to that end, let’s spend some time thinking about respect. Leaders must demonstrate respect, require it in the team, and be able to move our organizations forward in a rapidly changing world.

Everyone Deserves Respect

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Would You Want to Work With You?

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This is a guest blog by Steve Soldati, P.E.

Work WithPicture this: It’s 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, you’re thinking about where to go for lunch, but you are still waiting for a response from your project team member. You had requested this information via email three weeks ago and every few days you get a, “You should have it soon.” You sent an email earlier that morning asking for an update on the project designs and calculations to incorporate into your plan set, which is due in just one week, but still no word. You go off to lunch, steaming and upset about the lack of urgency and communication of your colleagues.

When you arrive back at the office, you open your inbox to see an email from your team member with the requested design and calculations. “Yes, finally!” you shout out loud. But when you open the email, the design is incomplete, and your team member has additional questions that should have been asked much earlier. You storm over to their desk to chew them out and tell them how poorly they performed. You tell them they need to communicate better, learn to design properly, and take responsibility for their work. Then you head back to your desk to rework the design, spending many additional hours to get it ready for the upcoming deadline. And you grow even more frustrated and stressed because there is still so much on your plate that needs to be done, but you are now worried that won’t happen. This causes you to become even more uneasy, cranky, and unpleasant to be around.

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Goal Setting: Think Big, Be Mindful

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This is a guest blog by Michael Burns, PE, PgMP, DBIA

goal setting

What a cool topic for my first EMI Blog—Goal Setting—as publishing and mentoring have been on my list of career objectives for many years. Writing my first draft, I realized it was January 4th, my father’s birthday and the time of year where resolutions and goal setting run rampant. My parents, school teachers who raised me in Boulder, Colorado, often limited their advice to philosophical statements like, “We are who we are becoming.” As a kid, this lack of concrete guidance frustrated me, as I sought clear direction for a successful life. Thirty years into my civil engineering career, as a parent, mentor, mentee and friend, I hold dearly to my parents’ guidance, accepting that we are who we are becoming is step one in balancing our desires against life’s events.

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TCEP 094: Harnessing Innovation in Engineering Leadership

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Harnessing InnovationIn episode 094 of The Civil Engineering Podcast, which is 4th episode in our 5-part series on infrastructure, Chris Knutson interviews Kate Harris, President, and CEO of Stanley Consultants about harnessing innovation in engineering leadership. Kate gets into future trends of the industry and how we can prepare for them. She also discusses public- and private partnerships, an important aspect of infrastructure projects.

Here are some of the questions asked of Kate Harris on Harnessing Innovation in Engineering Leadership:

  • You left university with a degree in quantity surveying. Did it prepare you for where you are today, CEO and President of an A/E firm?
  • What were some of the notable milestones in your career which indicated that senior leadership positions might be a real possibility?
  • What do exceptional A/E firms get right?
  • Can you give advice to young professionals looking to work better with clients and improve their communication skills?
  • What changes have you witnessed during your 25 years in the civil engineering industry?
  • What are your thoughts on private/public partnerships?
  • How do you decide what the most important task to work on is for any given day?
  • Share with us your thoughts on how an engineer can approach looking at the future?

Engineering Quotes:

Harnessing Innovation

Harnessing Innovation

Here are some key points discussed in this episode on harnessing innovation in engineering leadership:

  • Having a degree in Quantity Surveying gave me an appetite for creative problem solving and build-ability.
  • Throughout my career, I have tried many new things to get a broad view of our industry. I feel that this is important in trying to understand what matters to people. When you can understand what is important to other people, you will understand what questions to ask them.
  • Exceptionally good A/E firms understand that business success is in servicing clients and client experience. We need to be partners in terms of harnessing innovation in business thinking, management skills, giving advice, and we certainly need to be technically capable and creative.
  • It’s very important that companies understand what they are bringing to their clients, and not just what they are bringing to their constituents and their shareholders.
  • The key to working with clients is to listen actively to what they need, and to not just concentrate on what you want to say next.
  • We are all going to have to look to the future and figure out what the word “value” will mean tomorrow, rather than what it means today.
  • It’s not so much about what we know in our industry, it’s about what we know in our world, and what is going on outside of our industry, that is important for young engineers to know. Young engineers should get curious, be fearless and get educated on what is happening outside of the field.
  • Being technically competent without the ability to inspire others limits you in your career as a leader. A leader needs to be able to identify and support great talent. If you are planning on becoming the chief engineer of your company, you need to learn how to communicate with others in a way that inspires them to follow their dreams.
  • The key to communication is not what you want to tell people, it’s about figuring out how people assimilate information and what matters to them. You then have to allow them to understand what you are telling them. To do this, you need to change your style to match the way they think and listen.
  • It’s absolutely fundamental for project managers to know what success looks like for a business, and not just for a project.
  • Your job as a CEO is to find great talents, set direction and provide support. You need to carve out time to do all three of these things to be successful in your career.
  • Connect, communicate, listen and be very curious as an engineer.

More details in this episode…

About Kate Harris

Kate Harris, President and CEO of Stanley Consultants, has 25 years of international experience in the construction, engineering and consulting industry. Stanley Consultants provides engineering, enviroHarnessing Innovationnmental, and construction services at over 30 offices worldwide. Founded in 1913, the firm has completed engagements in all 50 states and 110 countries, and is ranked among the largest engineering companies in the United States – very impressive.

Kate Harris graduated with a First-Class Honors degree in Quantity Surveying from the University of the West of England in 1993. She has also completed the Advanced Management and Intellectual Property programs from Harvard. Harris has a broad range of contractor, client and consultant experience encompassing strategy development, risk management, building high performing teams, developing client relationships and profitably growing businesses. Most recently Harris provided board and executive advisory services following her global Commercial Officer role with MWH Global (now part of Stantec). During her 17-year tenure with the firm, she is credited with integrating service lines and setting global policy, performance measures and business practices. An active advocate of talent development, she continues to mentor upcoming generations of leaders.

Sources/References:

Engineering Management Accelerator Workshop (Online) | 5 PDHs
Engineering Membership Drive
Kate Harris LinkedIn
Stanley Consultants

This episode is brought to you by RedVector. The team at RedVector believes knowledge is the most powerful tool available for helping people enrich their lives and meet their professional goals. To find out more about RedVector continuing education, visit www.RedVector.com.

This episode is also brought to you by Danfoss.  Smart energy systems, efficient buildings, and raising construction sites are just a couple of areas where you can experience how Danfoss is part of the sustainable development of strong infrastructure, visit www.city.danfoss.com 

Please leave your comments or questions in the section below on harnessing innovation in engineering leadership.

  • If you enjoyed this post, please consider downloading our free list of 33 Productivity Routines of Top Engineering Executives. Click the button below to download.

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To your success,

Anthony Fasano, PE, LEED AP
Engineering Management Institute
Author of Engineer Your Own Success

Why Engineers Make Great CEOs

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Why Engineers Make Great CEOs is a guest blog by Thomas Anderson, P.E.

CEOsEngineering is the most common undergraduate degree of the Fortune 500 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). It has been for some time. Approximately one third of CEOs majored in engineering and only 11% graduated from business school. The Harvard Business Review has a list of the 100 best-performing CEOs on the planet.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos topped the list. Bezos earned a Bachelor of Science in computer science and electrical engineering from Princeton University. Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella is an engineer. General Motors’ Mary Barra as well. Carlos Ghosn of Nissan and Dennis Muilenburg of Boeing also have engineering backgrounds. Ursula Burns, the CEO and chairman of Xerox Corporation started her career as an engineering intern. In fact, 24 of the top 100 CEO’s have a Bachelors or Master’s degree in engineering.

Engineers are a little bit different. Sometimes introverted and always good at the math, they build and fix things; complex things. They have a unique ways of looking at the world. The qualities below make engineers exceptionally good at leading companies.

CEOs

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TECC 161: The Power of Passion for your Profession

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The Power of Passion for your Profession

Passion for your ProfessionIn this episode, I talk with Jane Sidebottom who is the President/Owner of Applied Marketing Knowledge about the power of passion for your profession. We discuss a framework focused on 7 questions to help you find the work you are passionate about.  The questions we discuss are from an article by Robert S. Kaplan’s in the Harvard Business Review: Two Ways to Clarify Your Professional Passions, March 30, 2015

Engineering Quotes:

Passion for your Profession

Passion for your Profession

Here are the seven questions discussed in this episode:

  1. When was a time when you were at your best?
  2. What were you doing?
  3. What were the key elements of the environment?
  4. What was the nature of the impact you were making?
  5. Did you have a boss or were you self-directed?
  6. What did you love about it?
  7. What were the factors that made it enjoyable and helped you shine?

Here are the key points discussed on the power of passion for your profession:

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