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Lessons Learned from Two Days with Engineering Leaders, and Laws on Life’s Outcomes

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IECD Meetup post PhotoA few days ago, we put on our annual Institute for Engineering Career Development (IECD) meetup in Austin, Texas.

The event consisted of three days of intensive learning sessions from over 15 accomplished speakers, several social outings, and interesting tours. Of course, I can’t forget to mention the more than 50 motivated engineers who attended the event from all over the US—all of whom walked away with career- and life-changing information and friendships.

This post will provide some lessons from this event in hopes that you can utilize the information to better your performance and results, both personally and professionally.

Lessons from Engineering Leaders

During the event, attendees had the opportunity to ask questions of some of the most successful engineering presidents and CEOs, and here are some key takeaways.

In order to become a partner in an engineering firm or an engineering leader, consider doing the following: [Read more…] about Lessons Learned from Two Days with Engineering Leaders, and Laws on Life’s Outcomes

Engineering Career Advice – 5 Tips for Acing Your Annual Performance Review

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Over the past week, I received at least 10 e-mails or phone calls from The Engineering Mastermind (TEM) members asking if I could help them prepare for their annual engineering career performance reviews. Most of the e-mails or phone calls started like this: “Anthony, I have my annual performance review tomorrow, and I was hoping I could speak to you about it.” These calls and requests inspired me to write this post to emphasize the importance that this yearly event holds for your engineering career and give some pointers for not messing it up.

Your annual performance review is a great opportunity to reflect upon your engineering career progress and maybe your one opportunity each year to present this progress to your employer. Here are five things you can do to get the most out of your annual performance review and not mess it up like many engineers do:

Prepare Ahead of Time – Most engineers, as I indicated above, wait until a day or two before to start preparing or even thinking about their annual performance reviews. If you had a big engineering project deadline on Friday, would you wait until Thursday night to work on it? No, of course not. Make your review just as important as all of your work deadlines—otherwise, you are putting your development LAST, and that is never a good thing. Start preparing one to three months before the actual review date.

Spend Time Reflecting and Writing – A few months before your review, reflect on the previous year. Make notes of all of your accomplishments as well as things you would like to improve upon. Where possible, quantify your accomplishments. For example, “Brought in $50,000 worth of engineering business to the firm.” Use these notes to either prepare a formal document that you can submit to your supervisor or to answer a pre-review questionnaire, if your supervisor gives one to you. This document should be submitted two months before your review to give your supervisor time to review, digest, and utilize the information in evaluating your performance, raise, and potential promotion. [Read more…] about Engineering Career Advice – 5 Tips for Acing Your Annual Performance Review

The Five Larger Best Civil Engineering Firms to Work For

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best civil engineering firmsAs we mentioned in a recent post, our members have been asking what the best engineering consulting firms to work for are, so this post covering some of the best civil engineering firms to work for is the first in a series. We should mention that our analysis of the best civil engineering firms to work for focused mostly on the larger firms, for two reasons. Firstly, information on these companies and their compensation packages is more readily available, and secondly, many of our members requested information on the larger international firms. We do want to make it clear, though, that are probably a lot of great small civil engineering firms out there; we just focused on the larger firms based on specific requests and available information. We did not take applications for these rankings; they are simply based off our discussions with civil engineers and information we found on these companies.

Civil engineers are the professionals tasked with interpreting blueprints and turning these designs into actual structures like houses, buildings, roadways, and bridges. Civil engineers are also required to be knowledgeable in all the aspects of construction so as to be able to come up with viable troubleshooting steps should technical or design issues arise at any point in the construction project. Because of these crucial responsibilities, civil engineers are practically a fixture on construction sites, as it is their job to ensure compliance with the blueprints.

Based on conversations with our members throughout the industry, we would like to highlight the following firms as some of best civil engineering firms to work for. If you have comments or questions, we encourage you to leave them at the bottom of this post.

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URS Corporation

One of the biggest engineering and design and construction firms in the United States is URS Corporation. Operating in the US as well as in Europe, the Asia Pacific, Africa, and the Americas, URS Corporation offers full engineering and design and construction services to private enterprises as well as government agencies around the world. Considered one of the biggest US firms, the company makes bridges, airports, marine and port facilities, oil and petroleum facilities, and mass transit rails. The company is commissioned for creating hazardous waste disposal systems as well. With such wide-ranging projects, the firm has constant need for civil engineers. URS Corporation offers some of the most attractive remuneration packages and the opportunity to widen one’s skill as well as grow in one’s profession.

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