Leadership and Management in Engineering

What should the world do about global warming and air pollution as a result of burning fossil fuels? The argument isn’t about whether global warming exists or not, but rather what really causes it. There is no doubt that burning fossil fuels and automobile emissions adversely affect the health of humans, animals, and birds. We have seen that solar cycles might be entering a significant stage, such that even if we stopped burning fossil fuels, global warming would likely continue apace. Hydrogen fuel cells will actually contribute to global warming because water vapor emissions are a greenhouse gas. The planet and humankind will, nevertheless, survive a warming onslaught. But, air pollution is a bigger disaster caused by the burning of fossil fuels that may irreversibly affect (or mutate) humans. I argue that nuclear energy is the choice of last resort that has to be activated now. Nuclear energy costs are comparable to costs for energy from coal and fossil fuels.

Federal, state, and local governments have been developing and implementing various comprehensive land-use and infrastructure investment plans. However, in several regions, rapid employment and housing growth have created severe quality-of-life and environmental problems due to sprawl-creating land-use policies and lack of investment for adequate public facilities. I present a conceptual dynamic comprehensive strategic planning (DCSP) decision analysis framework. The cyclic discrete staged DCSP incorporates short- and long-range integrated land-use, capacity planning, and capital budgeting decisions. Private and public sector developments are synchronized using an alternative mix of growth plans and a matching mix of technologies (infrastructure network). For each alternative, scenario analysis is applied to address risk from uncertainties of key driving factors such as state of the economy, demographic composition, and emerging technology. Impact analysis (fiscal, environmental, etc.) of each alternative policy is incorporated in the model.

This article focuses on the lessons learned while implementing ISO 9001:2000-compliant Quality Management Systems in small- and medium-sized construction companies in Portugal. It identifies the major difficulties to swift and successful implementation and proposes solutions. We make a comparison with equivalent issues in another unique industry and with cases described in the literature, and discuss how the solutions proposed in this article can be generalized to other industries and company sizes.

Leadership and mentoring are both lifelong activities. An essential part of being a leader is to serve as a mentor to young professionals. In this paper I explore the connection between leadership and mentoring, and offer suggestions for becoming a mentor. I discuss how leadership through mentoring makes for more capable engineers and a stronger engineering profession.