pp. 31-32
A project engineer depends on the work of others to get the job done. In certain respects, he or she functions more like a manager than an engineer. This can come as a rude surprise.

As a young professional engineer, up to this point in your career you have depended mainly on your own skills and abilities to succeed. In high school and college it was you who figured out what the teacher or professor wanted and how to get it done. You burned the midnight oil and worked until you finished an assignment. As a brand-new engineer, you designed the piping or wrote the report or analyzed the stresses in the machine part. You did what it took to get it done when your boss wanted it, or when the project schedule demanded it.

The project engineer must learn a new skill: management. Of course, the project engineering position doesn’t have all the dimensions and authorities of a management position, but there are many similarities when it comes to directing the work and dealing with people. At the same time there remains a significant technical component to the job. The project engineer uses engineering skills to bring judgment to decisions and to understand the arguments and rationale that other engineers present.

I’ve seen many talented engineers struggle with the transition from doing technical work to managing the efforts of others. Their first inclination is to do a problematic task themselves because it takes too long to teach someone else. They soon realize that they are drowning in work. They find themselves tending to details when they should be solving serious technical or commercial problems.

A person’s entire success as a project engineer depends on being able to throw a switch in her or his mind. A project engineer must become a manager, and act like one.

This chapter explores the management fundamentals that a project engineer needs. It’s a crash course in management, and you have already read the first lesson:

Think and act like a manager.