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Selecting an Engineering Company: Does Size Matter?

March 11, 2012 By 2 Comments

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...]

Filed Under: Career/Lifestyle Design, For Engineering Students, For Recent Engineering Grads, Work Family Balance Tagged With: , , , ,

How to Pass Any Test in Your Engineering Career

February 21, 2012 By 1 Comment

Featured Guest Blogger: William Merunka, EIT, LEED AP

While we may not like it, we face many tests in our engineering career. These may be exams for specific certifications, a test of your negotiation skills when trying to land a major client, or even your debate skills when trying to convince a town to approve a major construction project that you have spent countless hours on to develop the best environmental and economic design. No matter what kind of test you are faced with, if you are not prepared, your chance of passing will not be that great. In this article I will discuss a few steps that you can take to get prepared. While my examples will relate closely to the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam that I recently passed, these steps can be applied to any kind of test.

Know the rules/guidelines: It is important to know the rules and guidelines that need to be followed. Familiarize yourself with these guidelines so you know exactly what you are expected to do and how you need to do it. What tools/references are you allowed to bring, and which ones are you not allowed to bring. For academic exams, it is important to read admission guidelines. It would be terrible to spend countless hours studying for an 8 hour FE (also referred to as the EIT) exam only to be turned away because you arrived too late or you leave your admission ticket and/or personal identification at home. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Credentials, Engineering Education, For Engineering Students, For Recent Engineering Grads Tagged With: , , ,

Transitioning From Engineer to Manager : Engineering Career Advice from a Panel of Engineers that Have Made the Leap

January 26, 2012 By 2 Comments

Last week I had the pleasure of attending and participating in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Eastern Regional Younger Member Council (ERYMC) in Nashville, Tennessee.  The conference overall was awesome, but in this post I wanted to summarize the engineering career advice shared in the Saturday afternoon panel where three experienced engineers explained how they transitioned from engineer to manager.

The following is the advice that the three panelists shared:

  • You know you are ready to make the leap from engineer to manager when you feel like you are looking for something more; you want to contribute on a larger scale.
  • They all had a desire to move into engineering management position; they didn’t “have-to.”
  • You have to look at the big picture when you become a manager; look at the forest not the tree.
  • Try to get your employees to also look at the big picture. [Read more...]
Filed Under: Career/Lifestyle Design, For Recent Engineering Grads, Management/Leadership Tagged With: , ,

Transitioning from Engineer to Manager: How to Manage Engineering Professionals That Have More Experience Than You

January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The following is a brief summary of the 1-16-2012 session of the Engineer Your Own Success Radio Show for engineers.  You can listen to the entire show on our archives page.

During the latest session of my Engineer Your Own Success radio show I had the opportunity to coach a younger engineer (Mary) who was facing the challenge of having to manage or oversee a group of more experienced engineering experts.  This is a challenge that many engineering professionals face when transitioning from engineer to manager.

To give you some detailed background, Mary works for a large engineering company and is in charge of coordinating the preparation of large technical reports.  This includes the oversight of several experienced technical experts to ensure that they all submit their sections of the report on time.

Mary felt disrespected by these experts, and thought that her age and sex may have contributed to their lack of respect.  The experts showed this lack of respect by not submitting their work by the proposed deadline.

Based on our discussion, I provided Mary with the following recommendations: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Challenges with Supervisor/Boss, Management/Leadership Tagged With: , , ,

Develop YOUR Own Winning Team to Boost Your Engineering Career

January 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Featured Guest Blogger: Suzanne E. Pylant, EI, A.M. ASCE, Spylant Consulting, LLC

 Aren’t you just sick and tired of articles entitled:

  • 10 things to make you a better engineering manager
  • How to work more efficiently under stress
  • Top 3 ways to manage your boss/staff
  • How to become a successful engineer

And I could go on and on with self help topics, tips and how to’s on every website you visit until you’re regurgitating them on the floor in

Engineering Career Team

full color print like yesterday’s bad news. Most of us are too busy and many of us have LONG surpassed information overload (especially in this current economic environment) so we basically ignore any further published mental molestation of our maxed out days. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Career/Lifestyle Design, Communication, Inspirational Tagged With: , , , , , ,

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

January 4, 2012 By 3 Comments

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 career coach, 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:

From Engineer to Manager

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...]

Filed Under: Career/Lifestyle Design, For Recent Engineering Grads, Management/Leadership Tagged With: , , , , ,