The Unwritten Laws of Engineering

The article cited for this blog post is titled The Unwritten Laws of Engineering from the October 2010 issue of the Mechanical Engineering Magazine of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers).

W.J. King, author of The Unwritten Laws of Engineering, “observed that the chief obstacles to the success of engineers are of a personal and administrative rather than a technical nature.  King was an engineer with General Electric and later became a UCLA professor.  He admitted that his troubles in the engineering profession were not with the quality of his design work or his engineering expertise, but with the unwritten rules of professional conduct.

However menial and trivial your early assignments may appear, give them your best efforts.

The effort and enthusiasm put forth to accomplish even simple tasks will not go overlooked by superiors.  I know from firsthand experience how important that is.  While I was on a Co-op assignment with Duke Energy from January-August of this year, the vast majority of things assigned to me could have been handled by a 5^th grader, such as making copies, proofreading documents, etc, all of which had nothing to do with engineering competence.  However, I performed these tasks without complaint.  I actively sought out legitimate engineering projects and offered help on anything.  My superiors appreciated my enthusiasm, and slowly but surely, gave me more technically challenging tasks that I enjoyed doing.

Demonstrate the ability to get things done

Expressing initiative, resourcefulness, and persistence in all dealings will earn respect of colleagues.  Expressing the energy to start a project, keep it going, troubleshoot obstacles along the way will get you far.  Productivity is vital.

Develop a “Let’s go see!” attitude

King makes the point that an engineer can’t expect to be a successful problem solver in the real world by just sitting at a desk and stewing over drawings or reports to hypothesize a solution.  A real passion for going out in the field and visually assessing the problem is paramount.  

I can definitely relate to that.  My mentor at Duke would periodically come to my desk with projects he wanted me to be involved with.  Being totally new to the whole power plant thing, I typically was lost in the terminology and drawings.  However, once we got out in the field and took a look around, things fell into place.  It seems obvious that firsthand visual inspection is key to understanding the problem, but you would be surprised at how many engineers would sit at their desks all day.  I could never do that.

Strive for conciseness and clarity in oral or written reports; be extremely careful of the accuracy of your statements.

I can attest to the values of conciseness.  Nothing is more obnoxious or counter productive than listening to someone in a meeting ramble for 20 minutes about something that could have been said with 20 words.  The first step in a report or answer to a question is to “state the essence of the matter as succinctly as possible.”

King also expresses that if you do not know the answer to a question, do not try to guess out of a fear of looking incompetent.  A wrong answer is exponentially worse than no answer on major engineering projects.

According to Trevor Young, author of Technical Writing A-Z: A Commonsense Guide to Engineering Reports and Theses, good engineering requires good communication.  Communicating in a concise, accurate, and complete manner is a large part of being a good engineer.  Also, a good engineer should be able to express the relative importance of ideas in a report.

One of my personal rules in writing reports is never to assume someone knows what I’m thinking, and don’t leave anything open for interpretation.  An engineering project is an exact, precise undertaking.  Using formal language in an objective manner is key to conveying exactly what is intended.

One of the first things you owe your supervisor is to keep him or her informed of all significant developments.

Many young engineers hesitate to bother bosses with what they think are minor details, but it is their job to know what is going on at all times.  I got a taste of that at Duke.  Virtually every time I was in email contact with someone concerning a project, my boss asked me to copy him on the email, not matter how trivial the discussions.  Also, King notes that young engineers can’t be afraid to be the bearers of bad news.

Be as particular as you can in the selection of your supervisor

King expresses the importance of having a properly selected senior engineer as a mentor to guide a young engineer’s development.  I know how important that is.  A degree gives you basic tools to think through engineering problems, but does not prepare you for the obstacles you’ll encounter working with a company.  How to handle contractors, vendors, incompetent employees, basic project tasks, and all other things unrelated to the laws of physics is a learned set of skills.  Most will learn by imitation, thus you don’t want to get stuck with someone who is not well respected or incompetent.  I was fortunate in having a great mentor and very well respected throughout the company, but a different stroke of luck could have resigned me to someone much less competent, running the risk of acquiring some bad habits.