A career as a project engineer (and indeed, the qualifications required for such a responsible and often demanding position) is as challenging as it can be rewarding.
Widening the scope and reach of your knowledge base will subsequently allow you to expand your experience and help you achieve success in this field. Continue reading for more information.
Bring Your Ambitions to Progress to the Forefront
Presumably, if you are someone who is actively seeking to grow and expand your knowledge base in all matters pertaining to project engineering, then you would like—either within your current professional framework or with another company entirely—to progress to senior project management.
Senior project engineers, who require at least an undergraduate degree qualification in a subject relevant to their industry, must demonstrate the following skills:
- The innate ability to instantly prioritize tasks
- Strong time management skills
- Outstanding skills in leadership and mentorship
- An aptitude for identifying potential issues way ahead of time
- Excellent communication and people skills
- The ability to keep calm, measured, and professional under pressure
In addition, you should also never rest on your laurels; instead, you should seek to make yourself fully aware of innovations and the latest technological developments in the industry.
Be a Prolific Health and Safety Advocate
In any area of business, both in the context of an individual company and the industry as a whole, health and safety is, of course, always the most important consideration.
Start to actively enquire as to the specific status of projects relating to health and safety and essentially become an advocate for the company you represent. If there is already a dedicated health and safety champion within the hierarchical structure, begin to offer your assistance and advice, drawing on your own experience of reoccurring hazards and possible effective solutions.
Improve Your Innate Intuition
Working on your own initiative and more specifically, being able to make instant decisions, is a skill that is of optimum importance as a project engineer.
Your team members are likely to approach you with questions and queries across a wide spectrum of subjects, from how to choose the right pipe size for cleaning and maintenance equipment, to concerns over another employee’s conduct.
Luckily, working on your own intuition and following your gut instincts are skills that can be honed and perfected over time and you owe it to yourself, your career, and your employees to explore this.
Focus on Quality Control
Finally, another key method of expanding your skills and knowledge in project engineering is to closely involve yourself with the approval process relating to materials and equipment and to bring the standards of quality control to a position higher than those of your rivals.
Project engineers are, in actual fact, in the best position to effectively improve quality control processes, mainly due to their unique position to enforce random inspections across the site; to develop, modify, and maintain checklists; and to arrange inspections of the material delivered.
