All around the Maryland/DC area, water main breaks should come as no surprise to residents; but, we are all amazed each time it happens! And…it is happening with alarming frequency.
In mid June water main breaks in the Maryland suburbs triggered several smaller breaks throughout the lines in the County leading to the loss of more than 100 million gallons of fresh water before repairs could be made. More than 700 restaurants and tens of thousands of residents were forced to boil drinking water as a precautionary measure. Many restaurants, already affected by the slowing economy, had to close their doors for a period of time. The agency responsible for oversight, inspection and repair, Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) is the 8th largest water and wastewater utility in the country. As of July 15, they still cannot assess what caused the break.
Here is where it gets dicey: it is documented that for the past two years WSSC has had the budget to replace 27 miles of water main a year, but it replaced only 16 miles of pipe in fiscal 2007 and is expected to fix 25 miles of pipe in fiscal 2008. What happened? They had the money….had the funding. Where did it go?
We are seeing increases in taxes, electric bills, gas, water. The war has cost more than anyone wants to wrap their minds around. Who is overseeing the money that the agencies are getting? Who is accountable? And, where are they now?
That’s right, Social NOTworking. This title has a double meaning, which I will get to in a minute.
If you have the internet in front of you, you cannot help but at the very least be aware of the social networking/web 2.0 phenomenon. Here are some of the more prevalent social networking/web 2.0 sites that you may be a member of:
Linkedin, MySpace, Classmates.com, Facebook, ERE, Flickr, Meetup.com, Twitter, Second Life, Ning, Plaxo, Naymz, Xanga and FastPitch. And trust me when I tell you, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Used properly in terms of your profession, these sites live up to the “Social Networking” category that they reside in. Used improperly in terms of your profession, they become what I like to call “Social NOTworking” sites. Check it out:
A. Are the social networking sites NOT working for you in meeting your professional networking goals?
OR
B. Are the social networking sites bogging you down so much that you are NOT working?
If you answered “YES” to question A:
The first issue that you may want to address is actually question B. Beyond that, what you need to realize is that these social networks are great tools (”tools” being the key word here). The challenge is to utilize all your tools in your workbench, but some recruiters are SO reliant on these sites the same way so many recruiters are reliant solely on online resume databases that nothing much of measure is ever accomplished. You would not build a swing set with just a Phillips head screwdriver, right?
As a recruiter or HR professional, or even as a hiring manager or staff level engineer always on the lookout for outstanding additions to your team, make sure you are looking on the RIGHT sites. Chances are you are not going to find a civil engineering professionals hanging out on MySpace or running around on Second Life, but you may find those quality professionals on Linkedin or Facebook (Facebook is very similar to MySpace, but the presentation and the quality of content is much classier and desirable). For civil engineering, stick with the pioneers in social networking like Facebook & Linkedin - they are conservative and professional and run parallel to the personalities that we associate with the civil engineering community. Everyone else is trying to develop the next best social networking site, and each time they pull themselves further and further away from mainstream into areas that are unique, but not relevant to your professional audience. Though I am not a civil engineer, I am confident that civil engineers are not following each others’ every move on Twitter.
Finally, because these sites ARE all the rage, you cannot deny them. Develop interesting and exciting company MySpace or FaceBook pages that reach out to the college crowd. Have your employees blog or answer questions on the corresponding forums, throw up some pictures of completed projects or of your CEO knocking down a strike for the company bowling team, post jobs and publish press releases. Show up to the college career fairs with a couple of laptops displaying your MySpace of Facebook page and impress the masses. There is rarely a college student on campus who does not utilize one of these sites in their life.
If you answered “YES” to question B:
First and foremost, if you did answer “YES” to question B and you would like to respond in a defensive manner to this blog entry, make sure you come up with a nifty user name, you do not want your boss to know you are a “Social NOTworker.”
I suspect for a lot of people their day goes, or has gone, something like this: Arrive at the office at 8:30 AM, fire up a hot cup of joe and crank on the computer. Logon to your Linkedin account and check out the connection updates that occurred overnight, and then the status updates. But hey, cool, you can expand that list to see ALL of those updates, not just the most recent half dozen. Checking out what your connections did overnight, you click on the people that they made connections with and see if you might know them. If you do know them, then you make a request to connect, which leads to the frequent clicking of the “Send/Receive” button on your outlook toolbar all day. Maybe you don’t know that person, but you used to work at the company they work for, or maybe your neighbor does, so you click on the company name to see what other people in your extended network may work for them in an effort to connect. Going to the status updates you see all the completely irrelevant groups (with the exception of course to the Civil Engineering Central Group) that your connections joined, like the Google Group that is for those who use Google as their primary search engine (boy, what a way to really differentiate yourself); or The Open Networker Group which puts you in a group where everyone connects with everyone and you are not allowed to turn down an invitation or you will be booted out. You’ve requested to join all the groups that you want to join for the day and you anxiously await for the group moderator to approve your admittance into those groups. Along the way you have read and contributed to all the blogs that your connections run and you finally look up and realize that it is now 10:30AM…not only do you need a refill on your coffee, but you realize that you forgot to logon to your Twitter account before you even came to work this morning so you could let everyone know how you were feeling at that moment, only then to let everyone know that you were eating a bowl of Golden Grahams for breakfast. Time for a break, you’ve been working hard, so take a 10 minute stroll around the office, refill the coffee mug, sit back down to check your email and you see that your ex-girlfriend, one of your old college professors and the guy 3 cubes down from you have all posted comments on your wall on your Facebook page. Logon to Facebook, check out your wall, reply back onto their walls, accept invitations from old friends or colleagues who have tracked you down, email them, check out their photo albums, tag people in their photos that you know, and then spend the next 30 minutes using the Classmate Search and People You May Know tools to further expand your network on Facebook. Take some worthless but fun quizzes, serve up a few electronic cocktails and join a few causes. Time for lunch. Take an hour away from the office, clear your head, have a nice lunch and return to the office refreshed and ready focus on work for the rest of the day. Work your butt off all afternoon playing catch up on all that you missed during the morning. Your day is almost done, it’s nearly 7PM, you are ready to finally go home, and because you can’t really NOT do it, you send a tequila booze mail to your new friends that you made on Facebook today, and send one to yourself in celebration of the fact that you just received an email indicating that your application to join the Overachievers Club, a private membership club on Linkedin for outstanding individuals.
Have you been a social NOTworker?
The fact is, social networking is here, it is relevant, and it can be utilized in so many different ways. These networks can be a lot of fun, but when it comes to using them for professional purposes, I am in no way suggesting that you abandon or ignore them, you will be left in the dust. But learn how to effectively use the well known sites like Linkedin & Facebook to recruit for your firm or for your clients. Be seen, enhance your visibility and credibility by being active in the forums and blogs that specifically relate to what you do, like the ones you find here at CivilEngineeringCentral.com , they are full of intelligent information that you can really use. Just be smart about it!
Finally, here is a little 5 minute clip you might enjoy…so sit back, throw back a
Lessons should have been learned after 1000 levees failed in 1993. They weren’t.
Our July Newsletter featured the following article by Adam Pitluk which he wrote exclusively for CivilEngineeringCentral.com, we feel it is a worthy topic of discussion for the civil engineering community so we thought it would be appropriate to publish it on our blog as well. Enjoy.
By Adam Pitluk, Author & Journalist
TIME magazine contributor Adam Pitluk is the author of “Damned To Eternity” and “Standing Eight.” You can read his blogs “When the Levees Break” on CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s Blog Site, watch his MSNBC interview on the Inherent Flaws of the Midwestern Levees on his website and see him on ABC’s 20/20 in July. The press is taking note of Adams’s May 2008 prediction of the now watched levee failures of the Midwest. He’s written for a host of national publications, including AIR & SPACE and POPULAR MECHANICS. Adam has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri, and a master of science from Columbia University. You can read his flood predictions for this season on his website, www.adampitluk.com
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is charged with maintaining levees up and down the Mississippi River, as well as other major waterways across the country. Indeed, the Corps has historically built earthen and cement dams to shore up rivers around big cities like St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans, but a misconception is that the Corps single-handedly built the American levee system.
In fact, local interests in the late 1800s and early 1900s originally constructed most levees along the Mississippi River. Initially, farmers teamed up and hauled wheelbarrows of clay and compacted sand along the banks of the river to secure their land and crops from an otherwise surging offshoot. Over time, the Corps has made minor improvements on these levees, but they have never dug up the original, tenuous foundations. In this region of the country, the Mississippi Valley Division of the Corps was the overseeing body for dam improvements. But they weren’t always the first to know of trouble spots. For that, they relied on the local overseers.
As a result, levees like the one in West Quincy, Missouri, which broke during the Great Floods of 1993 and which is threatening to break right now, have not been properly updated to coincide with the creation of the Mississippi River’s lock and dam system of canals.
The West Quincy levee was originally 17 feet tall at the turn of the 20th century, and it remained that way through 1917, when the Fabius River Drainage District (the overseers of that levee) was formed. In 1936, Congress passed the Flood Control Act, which put levees under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers: They could effectively be called upon to help make improvements in some of the more rural areas of American ecosystems. Between 1960 and 1963, the Fabius district, along with the Army Corps of Engineers and $1.61 million of federal money, commissioned hydraulic pumps to siphon sand from the river and deposit it alongside the West Quincy levee. The dam was thus built up.
By July 1993, it stood approximately 24 feet high, and that 24 feet of earthen clay and sand was all that separated the Mississippi River from more than 14,000 acres of farmland in the Fabius River Drainage District. During the floods of 1973, the Mississippi crested at 26 feet and overtopped the levee, which resulted in the destruction of thousands of acres of farmland and some businesses, like the Knapheide Manufacturing Company.
Earlier in July 1993, Norman Haerr, the commissioner of the Fabius district, was informed by the Corps that this time around, the Mississippi River might rise all the way up to 30 feet of water. The Fabius district was not necessarily up the creek: They could build their levee up to 30 feet, but in so doing, they’d neglect a free board. The Corps highly recommends in their maintenance handbook that levees have a two-foot buffer zone, or free board, between the top of the river and the top of a levee. This safety zone allows a little leverage if the river rises higher than originally calculated, and it also contributes to the structural integrity of the dike. So Haerr and fellow farmer Bob Hoffmeister called in the bulldozers.
A fleet of bulldozers maneuvered to the back of the levee—the side furthest from the river—and actually pushed sand from the base of the levee up the side and toward the top. It worked. The more the bulldozers pushed, the more the levee grew from the ground. Just as the 30-foot target was being met, the Corps came back to Haerr and gave him the one piece of news he absolutely dreaded. They said that the rains up north in Iowa were heavier and more virulent than once expected. As such, Haerr and company could expect 32.5 feet of water.
Haerr received the news with suppressed panic. He wanted to ask the engineer if this was some kind of joke, but the messenger’s face was expressionless—as expressionless as the shocked face that looked back. There was nothing Haerr could do except continue to bulldoze the levee even higher.
The machines pushed and pushed, and an industrial black tarp was thrown over the sheer-faced gigantic mound to keep the sand from eroding. In the areas that didn’t have enough sand at the top, Haerr had volunteers stack sandbags.
Haerr’s strained eyes and clinched fists eased a bit come the morning of July 13, when the river seemed to be holding steady at 29 feet while the levee stood just over 30 feet in the air. The bulldozers continued to push. It is because of the thinning of the levee walls—and not because of sabotage—that the West Quincy levee failed on July 16, 1993.
Fast forward to June 2008: The Fabius River Drainage District started bulldozing their levees again. If this levee fails in 2008, you know who’s to blame.
It was only a few years ago that the mac-daddy SUV’s ruled the road and it was cool to haul around town in a Denali, Tahoe, Escalade, Hummer or Excursion, a phenomenon that I was certainly guilty of. Then everyone became concerned about the environment, gas prices went up, and the cross-over vehicle was all the rage. But now many Americans are considering going hybrid or dumping the car altogether in favor of public transportation. It seems as though public transit planning and engineering has been “the wave of the future” for many cities for quite some time now. Some cities were ahead of the curve, but most were on the curve or behind. Now we are at a critical juncture, and of course, everyone is scrambling to build out or make MAJOR overhauls to their existing public transit systems. Take a look:
Earlier this month the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) published* the following statistics, which in light of the rising gas prices, should not surprise you:
Americans took 2.6 billion trips on public transportation in the first three months of 2008 (85 million more than last year for the same time period).
10.3 billion trips were taken on public transportation in 2007, the highest number of trips taken in fifty years; the first quarter of 2008 showed an up tick of 3.3%.
Light rail had the highest percentage of ridership increase among all modes, with a 10.3% increase for the first quarter; the largest increases in ridership were found in Baltimore, Minneapolis, St. Louis and San Francisco.
Commuter rail increased 5.7 in the first of quarter of 2008; the largest increases in ridership were found in Seattle, Harrisburg, Oakland, Stockton, Pompano Beach and Philadelphia…all of which experienced double digit growth rates.
Heavy rail increased by 4.4% in the first quarter of 2008; the largest increases in ridership were seen in Staten Island, Boston, Jersey City, Los Angeles, New York City, Baltimore and San Francisco.
Bus ridership increased 2% in the first quarter of 2008; the largest increases in ridership were found in San Antonio, Denver, San Diego, Minneapolis, Seattle and Phoenix.
A very interesting point was made at the end of the video above…it stated that a good percentage of transit funding comes from a state’s gas tax. But if we are seeing a major increase in the use of public transportation, that means that less and less folks are fueling up their cars…you see where I’m going here? Where do we now turn for the funding that is being lost?
Quite frankly, I am pretty sure that we will never see $3.00 gas again unless you purchase a new vehicle from Chrysler , so we will continue to see the public transportation ridership rates rise. What does all of this mean? What it means is that if you are a civil engineer, you’ve got a bright future ahead with a strong demand for your talents. There will always be minor bumps in the road, like the state of the current land development market, but that will come back. But we need to repair, rebuild, upgrade, and expand our existing infrastructure (roads, bridges, utlities, etc), we need to build new to meet the demands of our population, and now public transportation is feeling the squeeze to meet the needs of the American public.
Have you made the full cross over into utilizing your local transit systems? Are you seeing an increase in RFP’s from your local transit agencies? Where will the funding come from? What projects are your firm working on in the area of public transporatation? Let’s hear from you!
Hurricanes, tornados, wild thunderstorms, earthquakes…..devastation. It is apparent that the civil engineering community has become firemen; rushing to suffering areas to put out fires here, there and everywhere. FEMA engineers, water resources specialists, geotechncial investigators, and everyone in between make their way to evaluate, report and advise. Add Mother Nature’s wrath to our much talked about “crumbling infrastructure” and we have a deadly mix.
With our continuing civil engineering staffing shortage, how can we design infrastructure to meet tomorrow’s needs, let alone today’s, while repairing yesterday’s designs (successful ones as well as the failures)?
The number of daily calls from civil engineers in down markets in states across the US amaze me.They apply for jobs outside their specific area of knowledge.We see experienced civil engineers applying for jobs as structural engineers.Companies do not want to cross train, so they won’t even interview the engineer. I understand that cross training costs money, but how much money is that open job costing you in the long run?
When business is strong and everyone is overworked and stressed, perhaps the idea of cross training is too much to handle. With the market slow down, could now be the time to review programs?We are not a community that has fully embraced staff planning or staffing predictions. Cross training shows loyalty to your staff, preparing for these days of uncertainty that are certain to arrive! Cross training can only help your company and your clients. It can eliminate the band-aid approach when employees resign.
Does your civil engineering employer have a cross training program?Let us know!
From time to time we get emails from those who visit our site asking what the final results are of our Questions of the Month, so without further hesitation, here is how YOU, our loyal audience, have responded:
DECEMBER 2007 QUESTION (That’s right, December of last year, this is the story of my life, 7 months ago and I am finally getting around to putting up the results - my wife can verify this, just ask her how high the pile of clean laundry is on my rocking chair just waiting to be put away; I will get around to it, eventually):
Through what source did you find your current employer?
OTHER* 24.4%
REFERRAL 22.2%
DIRECT CALL FROM A CORPORATE RECRUITER 17.8%
EXECUTIVE SEARCH FIRM/AGENCY 15.6%
JOB BOARD 15.6%
NEWSPAPER/PERIODICAL/TRADE JOURNAL 4.4%
*Anyone care to share what this 24.4% might be? A billboard, a little birdie?
JANUARY 2008 QUESTION:
Are you a member of any of the following networks: Linkedin, Jigsaw, Ning, ERE, Facebook or MySpace?
Yes 89.7%
No 10.3%
And of course there is FastPitch, Plaxo, Twitter, Meetup, Orkut. There is even a social network for all of then knitters & crocheters from around the world called Ravelry.com - no joke, check it out.
FEBRUARY 2008 QUESTION:
Have you ever accepted a counter-offer?
Yes 57.6%
No 42.4%
As a Search Consultant, I am pretty surprised at that rate. This has been a topic of discussion on our Forum and I most recently saw a question discussing this very issue on Linkedin. All the research and all the evidence makes a compelling argument to NEVER accept a counter-offer. I guess all those folks who responded “yes” are not reading our Forum or learning about this topic on Linkedin…they must be getting mis-information on Ravelry.com !
MARCH 2008 QUESTION:
What is your opinion on Public Private Partnerships (P3) as it relates to the US infrastructure?
Which do you consider to be the greater civil engineering achievement?
The Panama Canal 54.4%
The Channel Tunnel 28.1%
The Golden Gate Bridge 17.5%
The Empire State Building 0.0%
Personally speaking, my biggest civil engineering achievement was the sandbox I built for my kids in the back yard - it’s a square shaped frame made out of equal length railroad ties…with sand dumped inside. I’m serious. BIG achievement for me.
MAY 2008 QUESTION:
Has your organization purchased AND fully integrated a 3-D cad program?
Yes 65%
No 35%
Do these 3-D programs come with the cardboard 3-D glasses, or are they sold
separately?
We will likely post the results every six months. Please make sure you visit our site each month and cast your vote. Feel free to reply to this blog submission with any of your comments in regards to the responses above.
FYI, don’t forget to vote for this month’s QUESTION OF THE MONTH IS:
After 21 years of recruiting in the civil engineering community, I admit, I have my favorite clients. When they call, my team’s ears perk up. Fingers fly over computer files and the phone lines light up! What makes them a favorite? How can companies get a recruiter’s loyalty, their trust, their market intelligence? Here are 7 steps to get you on the road to the right relationship:
1. Treat your selected recruiter as a teaming partner.
After you sign a contract, accept that recruiter as someone who can make your life easier. Team with them on your searches. Recruiters should be partners; we should not be put in an adversarial role. Integrity and trust are a two-way street.
2. Describe your search assignments honestly.
In many instances, recruiters are Emergency Medical Techs (EMTs). We are hired to perform triage. An opening has occurred and help is needed immediately. To make accurate assessments and plan a course of treatment, we need you to provide us with vital information. If this urgency changes or a candidate is identified during the process, inform your team as soon as possible. Time is a valuable asset. Don’t waste yours or anyone else’s.
3. Respond in a reasonable timeframe to calls, emails, presented resumes.
Relationships take time. Discuss your preferred method of communication and set guidelines for response times. Remember how it was when you were looking for a job? Timely feedback is critical and a reflection of you and your company.
4. Know how to sell your company, and do so in an interview.
The days of quality job seekers begging you to hire them have ended. New job seekers are savvy. Many talented, prospective employees have multiple interviews. You need to know your company strengths and sell them. A good recruiter will have the job seeker excited of the potential of joining your company. Help keep that excitement!
6. Make a judicious decision to hire or not hire.
Indecision about extending an offer to a candidate is tantamount to a “no” offer decision. Don’t expect a recruiter to tap dance for days on end. Keep them informed of roadblocks to the hiring process and together you may come up with a solution to keep enthusiasm alive for those potential hires.
7. Extend a strong offer package.
Tell your recruiter what you will and will not be able to package in an offer. Let them do their job and work with them in closing the deal. Give them the tools to fill the gap in your technical team.
Successful recruiting, while part skill and part timing, is about relationships. Productive relationships take time and commitment. Recruiting the right headhunter can reduce your hiring stress and ensure a strong group of qualified candidates.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to Shifter. I know, I know, who the heck is Shifter? Well, Shifter is a member of the forum on the CivilEngineeringCentral.com website and he recently posed some comments and questions that I felt I might know a little bit about.
Take a look at what Shifter had to say:
What should be the logic and strategy when interviewing for a position and revealing your current compensation?
I do not think that it would be proper to refuse to reveal your current salary and compensation to prospective employers; but I think that the offer I will receive will be ‘just a bit better’ than my current situation and not a fair market offer.
I equate this with the general noting of salary “commensurate with experience” on most corporate postings.
I want to put myself in the position for a premium offer without either offending the prospective company or having to specifically reveal that my job search has multiple options.
Suggestions?
Having placed hundreds of civil engineering professionals throughout my career, and of course having negotiated most of their offers, I do have a few suggestions (in fact, most engineers that I work with build a spreadsheet according to these suggestions…go figure?!?!?!):
Know Yourself
What revenues have been generated as a direct result of your marketing efforts?
What clients can you bring with you?
What percentage of your hours worked are billable? What percentage is overhead?
How many people have you successfully supervised, motivated and mentored?
How much time do you put in to your job above and beyond the typical 40-hour work week?
What is your complete compensation plan (salary, overtime, bonus, profit sharing, 401K matching, PTO, out of pocket insurance costs, cell phone, laptop, car allowance, etc)?
Know Your Peers
What are your peers making? Find out what they are really making, not what they tell you they are making.
How does your current level of responsibility match up to your peers’ responsibility?
What technology are your peers using?
Know The Position
Do you thoroughly understand the role that is being offered to you? Do not assume anything based merely upon the title. I know “Project Managers” that would be Project Engineers, I know “Directors of Transportation” that would be Project Managers, and I know “Designers” that would be Cadd Drafters at any other firm in town. So make you sure you fully understand the responsibilities and expectations.
Have you been presented, and do you have a full understanding of, the company’s benefits?
Do you have a firm understanding of the average work hours…really?
If it is a newly created position, how committed is the company…really? What is their time frame for getting the ship up and running…really?
Of course there are other factors to consider as well, but the above should give you a good baseline to start with. If you can lay all of this out to your potential employer as you present what you have to offer, and if you are confident as to what you can bring to the table and can subsequently back that up, and if you are already being compensated “fair market value,” than you will not, or shall I say, should not, receive an offer that is “just a little bit better.” If you work for a miserable company that pays inflated salaries because they know they are miserable to work for, your offer may only be a “little bit better,” but your quality of life, work environment, etc may drastically improve. Sometimes we see people that are underpaid-not because they underperform (though this is many times the case), but because the employer is out of touch with market salary conditions, so you would need to justify your request for a large increase in pay (know yourself, know your peers). In the end, if you are not satisfied with the offer then you have to be prepared to walk away.
To get the premium offer you are looking for, you must have a full understanding of all of the above, and in turn be able to effectively communicate it. Keep in mind though that a premium offer often lies in the eyes of the beholder.
Last week the CBS Early Show aired a segment concerning the deteriorating U.S. Infrastructure. ASCE President David Mongan and outspoken NY Engineer “Gridlock Sam” Schwartz contributed to the discussion.
You can see the short video report here:
Yes, you are hearing correctly on the video…an estimated $1,500,000,000,000 ($1.5 trillion) over the next five years will most likely be needed to avoid large-scale disaster. That is referring to repair and maintenance…add on new and expanding infrastructure costs! It seems as though this is a re-occurring issue that is brought up a couple times each year, yet it keeps being brushed aside by other issues.
At least we are in a market where we are needed…but where do we get that kind of money?!?!?! And, how did we get into this situation?!?!?!
Is NOT pursuing your Professional Engineering license even an option? If you are a member of the consulting world (and possibly other worlds), the answer is “NO!” When entering the field of engineering, especially as a consultant, pursuing one’s Professional Engineering license is a must. It lends itself to a higher level of credibility and respect, it shows initiative, shows understanding and knowledge, and it allows for a level of trust by the community within which you work that you might not otherwise receive. Quite honestly, who wants to put the engineering of a dam or a bridge in the hands of an unlicensed engineer just because they have 25 years of experience, even if they hand off the plans to be signed by a PE? Not me; not the public; and not the owner of that bridge or dam. If that was the case, then I would prefer you put the prefix “Dr.” in front of my last name, as I have successfully nurtured back to health my three children time and time again after diagnosing them with headaches, colds, flu, fevers, and other various ailments. Luckily I have been able to successfully nurse them back to health; but if I make one error or neglect a certain symptom that lands them in the hospital as a result, I’m in big trouble. Often times I speak to engineers by self imposed title, not by registration. They may have a BS, they may or may not have passed their Fundamentals of Engineering examination, but for some reason they have not fully pursued their P.E. license. As a search consultant, I always inquire as to why? Here are the top three responses, with my two cents added:
A. “My college professors never really pushed registration.”
Shame on your professor, shame on the university you attended. Someone deserves a letter of reprimand. If it’s not too late, take the FE Exam – it’s a lot of book/classroom material; move quickly so you are not too far removed from this information. The Dean of the engineering program at your Alma Mater should be informed that s/he needs to change their philosophy. By NOT pushing registration to the student body, they are holding back their students from long term opportunity.
B. “My boss said it wasn’t really necessary.”
If your boss is not pushing it, s/he may be threatened by you – threatened that you may advance more rapidly then them once you have your P.E. Or threatened that you may leave as you will become more marketable to the competition. If this is the case, get out while you can.
C. “Work/Life/Family got too crazy.”
You’re preachin’ to the choir, my friend. Everyone is working crazy hours and is so busy at home. That is no excuse these days…in fact, it’s 1AM on a Wednesday morning and here I am writing this article after putting in a full day of work at the office. Your employer should be supporting you in the registration process and making sure they give you the appropriate training, mentorship, and study time. For those that were not given this opportunity earlier in your career, it may be too late. Eventually you get married, start a family, and then it REALLY becomes difficult. GET IT DONE EARLY.
So, unless you have the desire to be a glorified engineering technician (not that there is anything wrong with that), make the pursuit of your P.E. license your number one priority early in your career. I can’t tell you how many times I have presented a candidate who has all the technical, project, operations and marketing experience that my client is looking for, but they will not even consider the candidate because they do not have their license. Is this closed minded? Maybe. Is it reality? Definitely.
