Leadership and Management in Engineering

Most people would agree that a good leader of the 21st century must first be a person of character and integrity. Too often, however, many do not follow through on the need of a leader to be a good citizen or realize that he or she practices in a profession that is ethically bound to promote the health, safety, and welfare of the public. One of the greatest speeches ever given on this subject, in the eyes of the author, is one delivered by Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in 1910 titled “Citizenship in a Republic.” This paper takes the words Roosevelt spoke in the early twentieth century and shows how they apply in the early 21st century. The civil engineer can learn from them.

Common effective management practices are found among successful organizations. Among those practices are establishing well-defined values and goals and working to make employees accept those values as their own; knowing the organization’s clients and working to find and keep those clients satisfied; developing and supporting employees; and communicating clearly. This article discusses these four common practices and how they have helped well-known organizations succeed.

The civil engineering profession has long recognized the need for engineers at all levels to enhance their technical expertise with business, leadership, and management capabilities. During its 17-year journey to strengthen the organization, Freese and Nichols found the Baldrige Performance Excellence Criteria to be the most effective guide for building leadership and management skills that deliver planned, sustainable business success. To help educate other engineering firms about the benefits of adopting performance excellence strategies, this article describes the impact of strategic planning and leadership development in building a foundation for organizational success.

Planned obsolescence is usually looked down upon as a business trick to get consumers to buy more products. But in a fast-changing world that obeys Moore’s law, it might actually be a solution to better adaptation. When I talk about “planned obsolescence,” I am not referring to consumer goods or our infrastructure but the present and future of our professional engineering careers.

As designers, engineers provide the basis for the life-cycle quality of constructed facilities and serve as uniquely qualified master builders. For effective performance among the life-cycle stages, it is necessary to design quality-management systems or programs to be accomplished through specifications or special conditions. Materials engineers working on highways have developed objective programs that serve as examples and templates for the development of quality-management specifications. Programs being developed in workmanship expand the engineer’s ability to cover most quality issues and to establish general design practices. Similar programs are emerging in buildings. True values of conformance and performance must be determined through independent data programs. Independent data allow the engineer to serve the owner by connecting all life-cycle stages and optimizing performance among them. This paper demonstrates five material-testing and two workmanship-inspection programs that run independent evaluations; the resulting data interact to help engineers manage projects, programs, and systems.

Junior engineers often enter their careers thinking that they have learned all the academic concepts they need to be successful in their field. However, once they begin working, they are asked to perform tasks that they only vaguely remember from class, to use computer programs that they have never heard of, and to perform calculations that they have no idea how to begin. The truth is that undergraduate and even graduate coursework provides engineers with only the basic structure for knowledge that they will develop during the course of their careers. Well-rounded and successful engineers need to approach their careers with an open mind and expect to learn new skills on the job, often under the pressure of impending deadlines and demanding clients. The willingness to learn, be flexible, and perform tasks that one is not familiar with is invaluable in the workplace, and it can open doors that take a career in new and exciting directions. The knowledge associated with experience and perseverance is far greater than that gleaned from textbooks, although developing that knowledge requires two characteristics that are not taught in engineering curriculum: patience and flexibility.