Leadership and Management in Engineering

Leadership development has become increasingly important in engineering education as companies look for engineers with leadership, communication, and teamwork skills. To embed these competencies into engineering curricula, a competency-based educational model has been implemented in which 4th-year engineering students led design project teams made up of 1st-year students. The study described in this paper had two aims. The first was to determine which leadership competencies were exhibited by the 4th-year students. The second was to assess their perceived leadership effectiveness. We identified leadership competencies using the behavioral event interview technique and measured leadership effectiveness using a 360-degree assessment. The results demonstrate that the student leaders exhibited the following competencies most frequently: commitment to learning, interpersonal communication, teamwork, and results orientation. The results also indicate that the 1st-year students perceived the student leaders’ leadership effectiveness as satisfactory. The educational model described in this paper can easily be implemented in other institutions to encourage and nurture leadership talent in students.

ASCE has been developing and releasing periodic reports on the status of the nation’s infrastructure since 1998. Over the years periodic reports on infrastructure status have also been developed for several states and local jurisdictions. Infrastructure reporting is helpful for sending political decision makers and their constituencies messages about the relative urgency of investing in civil infrastructure in the context of other national priorities, such as education, health care, and security. Periodic infrastructure reporting is also a formal exercise that states and local agencies can use to demonstrate their accountability as infrastructure stewards. This paper presents a decision support tool that was developed to enhance the infrastructure report card process in the state of Georgia. The Infrastructure Rating Tool (IRT) is based on multiple attribute decision making (MADM) and helps the evaluator to make more explicit the scoring criteria used to evaluate the different infrastructure categories, the weights assigned to these criteria to develop an aggregate score, and the scale used in determining the final grade. The tool was developed based on the 2009 ASCE Report Card methodology and first applied in the release of the 2009 ASCE Georgia Infrastructure Report Card. Given that there are subjective elements in the infrastructure reporting process, decision support tools such as the IRT can help to make the process more transparent and objective, and result in the development of more credible decision support information.

George J. Pierson, the recipient of the Parcel-Sverdrup Award for Leadership in Engineering, reflects on the contributions of civil engineers throughout history and argues that to remain relevant, civil engineers must embrace their rightful role as leaders in the ongoing advancement of society.

Conflicts of interest, whether actual, potential, or simply a situation having the appearance thereof, occur often in the global facilities and infrastructure design and construction industry, of which engineers are an important and integral part. The procurement of engineering services by governments and agencies can be the first checkpoint for preserving ethical conduct, and the enhanced ethics from this process can then propagate down the value chain in the subsequent delivery of design services, the procurement of construction services, equipment, materials, and supplies needed for construction, and the provision of ancillary services. This paper proposes to account for a range of properly disclosed conflicts of interest, using a scoring framework in the selection process that includes the benefits of accepting a certain degree or level of conflict of interest and weighing it, in a transparent process, against the adverse risks and consequences of a conflict. A two-part metric is proposed: the first part quantifies the adverse risks of conflict of interest (ARCOI) with a range of negative to zero values, and the second quantifies the benefits of accepting the conflict of interest (BACOI). Adding these two values provides a total conflict of interest (TCOI) score, which can then be properly combined and weighted with the other components common in procurement scoring frameworks, which have points for firm qualifications, staff qualifications, technical approach, and price, in order to arrive at a transparent selection decision. The paper provides the rationale and also practical commentary for implementation of the proposed procedures.

Over the past 5 years, the economy has been unsettled. As a result, the culture and mood at many companies has changed as executives have reevaluated their place in the current market and developed strategies to allow them continued success. As companies evolve, it is important that they cater to their employees, who are their biggest asset. By creating a more enjoyable work environment for employees, companies are positioning themselves better for success. In this paper, we discuss five aspects of creating competitive advantages through people: (1) a belief in individual responsibility and autonomy and a strong sense of team collaboration; (2) a culture of continual training, education, and mentoring; (3) a challenging work environment in which everyone is committed to excellence; (4) open communication and collaboration; and (5) strong leadership to challenge and support employees to reach higher levels of success. Each of these topics is complex and could be discussed in significantly more detail than it is in this paper. However, our goal is to show that implementing a few simple ideas can drastically change the culture of an organization and the disposition of its employees. As our professions become more entwined with our personal lives and as people within our companies are able to work together despite their geographic location, it becomes even more important to create an organizational culture in which employees are happy and feel that they are contributing to the company’s overall goal. A company cannot be successful without devoted employees.