Artiaga, Francis Prince S.

February 25, 2022

CE 521
MWF 6:20-7:20 PM

ASSIGNMENT 5

Guidelines to Successful Engineering Practice (The Engineer his functions and qualification)

1. Define Your Goals

Define where you would like to be as an engineer in the short and long-term. You’re not making an
unbreakable commitment when you do this, but it will help to keep you focused and moving forward.
Regularly review your progress to achieving your goals.

2. Commit Yourself to Continuous Professional Development

To keep up in a rapidly changing world and enhance your value to employers, you should
engage in continuous professional development. In other words, you should acquire new skills with
enthusiasm while being on a constant lookout for new professional development opportunities.

3. Don’t stop Learning

Skills Problem-solving is an essential skill in just about every field of engineering. It is also a
skill that can be continuously improved. So, work on developing your problem-solving skills at each
stage in your career.

4. Improve your Communication skills

You will need to communicate with others at various levels throughout your career. This includes
peers on your team, junior engineers as you become more senior, those in senior positions to you, clients who
are not engineers, engineers who work for your company’s customers, and more. Therefore, it’s important to
develop your communication skills. Collaboration skills – when everyone on the team works together,
problems are solved faster, solutions are more effective, and quality is maintained. So, having good
collaboration skills is important.

5. Details Matter

Details matter in engineering, so be meticulous in your attention to detail, whatever the task and
whatever the project.

6. Learn from Mistakes

As a young engineer, you will make mistakes, and you will fail. Mistakes are part of the process,
particularly if you work with cutting edge technologies, processes, or systems. You should use these situations
as an opportunity to learn, develop, and improve.

7. Embrace Change

Rapid advances in technologies and thinking mean nothing in engineering stands still, particularly if
you’re involved in software engineering, automation engineering, and similar fields. You should embrace these
rapid developments and never get stuck in an attitude of “that’s the way we’ve always done it”. Instead,
always be flexible, so you’re ready to change.
8. Work Hard

This applies to every industry and job type, including engineering. You should take your inspiration
from Thomas Edison, the great inventor. He said: “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent
perspiration.”

9. Be Optimistic

Engineering is often about problem-solving, so it’s important to have a can-do, optimistic attitude. Of
course, you need to be realistic too, but remaining optimistic when facing challenges will take you a long way.

10. Identify Role Models and Mentors

You can learn a lot from role models and mentors to help you further develop your career. This could
be the best engineer in the company you work for, for example. You can formalise the mentoring relationship,
but it doesn’t have to be formal. Instead, you can simply talk to them, ask questions, work on teams or
projects they are also involved with, etc. You can also seek inspiration from role models outside your
company, including industry leaders. When doing this, don’t just look at the great engineering work they do,
but also how they became successful.

11. Stay Flexible

Engineering is a very broad field with lots of opportunities. You should remain open-minded,
therefore, about where your career will take you. In fact, you could be doing a job role in 10 years that doesn’t
even exist today. Also, industries you may never have considered could present you with significant
opportunities. One of the points above says you should define your goals, but you should remain flexible in
their implementation.

12. Get the Right Work-Life Balance

Not everything in life is about work. In fact, work isn’t even the most important thing. We all know
this, but it is all too easy to start prioritising work over other aspects of your life. There are occasions when this
is unavoidable, such as when a project deadline is fast approaching. However, it is important to get the right
overall work-life balance to be a successful engineer.

13. Focus on the Long-Term

You can become a good engineer in a relatively short period of time, but real success takes time. You
should view it as a marathon, not a sprint