The key to being a high performance engineer - Part 2
Australia's urgent need for Engineering Leadership
Have you noticed lately how every aspect of our infrastructure is at bursting point?
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Public transport is overwhelmed with passengers.
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Roads are clogged most of the time - and the ability to predict travel time from place to place is long gone.
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Whole areas are affected by either severe drought, devastating bushfires - or more recently severe flooding and devastation.
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Our playing fields are either parched and brown and unpleasant to use - or more recently under water.
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Power supplies are stretched during peak load times.
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Hospitals have long waiting list ...need I go on.
I have come to believe that outcomes, both good and bad, are delivered by processes. I often ponder as to how has this all happened? What has changed with the underlying processes that we have these issues now - when in the past (in my living memory anyway), we did not?
Well, I have a hypothesis to put forward.
When I was a younger Engineer, there was a number of Engineering Institution that looked after all of these areas of our vital infrastructure. The Victorian institutions were bodies like The Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW), the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission (SR&WSC), the Country Roads Board (CRB), the Gas and Fuel Corporation, the State Electricity Commission (SECV) to name the major ones - the so-called Quangos. There were also Town and City Engineers in each and every municipality or town overseeing the engineering works.
Engineers were able to just get on and do what they do best - with a minimum of "interference". To some extent that was also their downfall. Their desire to have the best "engineering" outcomes - whilst ignoring the wishes of the community and their political overlords resulted in their eventual demise.
Today, those institutions and the associated engineering roles no longer exist. They have been replaced by a matrix of smaller organisations often headed up by non-engineering skilled managers. As a consequence the voice of the engineer has been drowned out by a myriad of other, often competing, voices.
I was talking to another Engineer the other day and his thought was that the Consulting Engineering Companies would be able to fill this role. Not so, in my view... most of the Consulting Companies are bound by confidentiality agreements because they are either working on projects, tendering on projects - or hope to do so as a matter of business. So they have a conflict. Do they speak out against poorly conceived projects, and risk legal action or exclusion from Government tenders - or do they keep quiet? I am not judging them in this - they have a business to run - and shareholders to satisfy. They cannot be expected to shoulder that responsibility.
So what is to be done? There is no point in looking back wistfully at the "good old days". What we have is what we have.
The demands of the current era are different from the past. The community expects consultation - and rightly so. There are many competing factors at play now also - sustainability, environmental protection, noise abatement, more complex legal aspects, multiple funding sources and many more factors. It is up to engineers to rise to this challenge - not sit back and bemoan the loss of identity and influence. In my view this means that we need to see the role of the Engineer as being way more than the technically competent engineer.
Our forebears like Major General Sir John Monash seem to have had the right idea! Isn't it time that we took a leaf from their book.
It is what we do next - as a profession - as an Engineering Team - that will count.
I agree that Engineers should be ingenious, AND that tends to take us into a narrowing role of doing things "right". As you would see from my previous comments being a professional engineer needs to involve more - that is to say that we need to take a birds eye view and make sure we are doing the right things. I have heard it said that managers do things right - leaders do the right thing. So I am suggesting that as Engineers and Engineering Leaders we need to ensure that we are doing the right things - and then ensuring that we then do them right. This is all about being a better Engineer in a much broader context - including improved ingenuity, influencing skills, negotiating skills etc per other contributors that have said it better then me. We have avoided the essential engineering leadership role long enough (in my generation anyway). An example of this is set out in this article. Go to the last few paragraphs for the comments on the (engineering) failures that have contributed to the devastating floods.
It is a sad commentary that a journalist (not an Engineer) can see so clearly what our communities have ignored for too long (in my generation). As a one-time hydrologist in my past career - we know these things. Where is our voice of reason? Why do we build in these areas? Why do we build the way that we do? Why do we not learn more from the past devastations? There is a political storm on the horizon - and it may well be about Engineering Leadership and making sure that we do the right things (not just do things right). We will need to stand up and be counted as a profession to ensure that we do not get pushed to the background by lawyers, accountants and politicians to the narrow world of doing the things that they request in the right way.
I believe that Engineering Excellence is often interpreted in a narrow way focused on just technical excellence. Whilst this is, and always will be, an essential element in being an excellent Engineer there is more involved in becoming a high performing Engineer. You must also encompass practice in management and leadership.
Engineers all work in multi-function teams these days. As a minimum we rely on IT systems and accounting systems to be able to complete projects. It is essential that we can relate to all the team members and create high performing teams to ensure the best outcomes. Deliberate practice in areas such as sound management and business practice, influencing skills, negotiating skills, presentation skills and leadership skills to name just few are essential.
If you would like to know more - please seek out the Centre for Engineering Leadership and Management (CELM) at Engineers Australia. The Engineering Executive competencies provide a balanced view on the areas of practice that anyone wanting to become a high performing Engineer should consider in addition to technical excellence.
If you are interested in coaching and mentoring to become a high performing Engineer - please go to www.viccelm.org.au (VicCELM is a chapter of CELM at Engineers Australia)
The Deming PDCA is an excellent approach to continuous improvement in business (and in life in general). There is also a more evolved version that has been expanded out into the (Australian) Business Excellence Framework (BEF). It has as the engine for change the ADRI Cycle. Approach - Deploy - Results - Improvement (similar to PDCA).
The BEF also looks holistically at seven categories...
Category 1: Leadership
Category 2: Strategy & Planning
Category 3: Information & Knowledge
Category 4: People
Category 5: Customer & Market Focus
Category 6: Process Management, Improvement & Innovation
Category 7: Success and Sustainability
If you would like to learn more - you could go here, and obtain a copy of the document - or feel free to contact me as well.
I am a volunteer Evaluator for the Australian Business Excellence Awards which compares the entrant with the best practice as set out in the BEF. The 2010 Excellence Medal and Gold Award went to DORIC Group - a Perth based engineering and construction company.
Engineering is quite unique and underpins much of what we now consider as a civilised society. Having said that, the world has passed Engineers by in my generation. I could go further and say that my generation of Engineers has failed the profession and the community.
The essential community resources like water, flood mitigation, power, public transport, ports and road networks are all at breaking point because of the lack of Engineering Leadership. I believe that it is because we have not been able to show leadership in the community - and this needs to be addressed urgently.
I believe that the technical side of Engineering is as high as ever. There are many examples of outstanding Engineering feats (the rectangular stadium in Melbourne springs to mind). And this must not change. Engineering technical excellence is always going to be what defines us as a profession. But in itself it is no longer enough (if it ever was).
As I understand it - people like Sir John Monash were very forceful in putting their Engineering view forward. Our forebears built our nation. Roads, railways, ports, water supply, Snowy Mountain Schemes, Ord River scheme, irrigation schemes etc. Where is that voice today? We have seen the dramatic decline in Australia's infrastructure because Engineering Leaders have not been in the key decision making positions.
Why? Now there is a good question.
I have been active in the Centre for Engineering Leadership and Management for some years now. It is all about developing a listening around some complimentary skills to the important technical competencies of being an Engineer.
For me it is an AND, not an OR, with the technical development. So I see it as technical skills AND business skills AND people skills AND leadership skills. Unfortunately it is interpreted often as technical OR those "other" skills. Worse, if you study the "other" skills then you must leave the engineering profession!
I suspect that it is all part of the denial of the need to change and grow as an Engineering Profession. In 2009 I started up a Coaching and Mentoring Panel for Engineers. That can be viewed at www.viccelm.org.au
The views expressed in this article are entirely those of the author - John McIntosh. They do not necessarily represent the views of the organisations mentioned: Engineers Australia, the Centre for Engineering Leadership and Management or SAI-Global. You can see more of John's work activities at these websites:
- There are several failures described above.
Overall process: the Toowoomba story shows an engineer doing their job and defining what was required only to have their advice not taken to the detriment of everyone.
Engineering influence: the inability of Engineers to sway those with decision making power to implement what was required.
Long term vision: flood zones repeatedly flooding and bushfire zones repeatedly burning yet we build and plan with short term objectives in mind.
As discussed above, the technical challenges rise as we have access to increasingly more complex technology yet we squeeze the process tighter on both time and cost and yet have zero tolerance for negative outcomes.
An interesting new initiative called Professional Performance, Innovation & Risk http://sydney.edu.au/warrencentre/PPIR.html looks at the process side of engineering professional performance. The idea here is significant because it recognises that process failures can be as detrimental to technical outcomes as competence can.
In practice we need both: competence and good process.
I don't know any engineers who are trying to do a poor job, trying to screw up projects, trying to waste their company's resources or trying to do harm to anyone else either personally or via their assets. So it isn't an ethical issue. And while there has been discussion about the need to keep engineering technical ability at a sufficiently high standard, it seems that the forshortening of decision making horizons and the focus on short term cost based outcomes over long term wellbeing for all is where the real focus should be.
So to the accusation that engineers have failed to lead and that is the cause of our current social woes. Hmm. I think I agree in part. At this stage of my career I have found that I can make a bigger difference through engaging with others through forums, business groups, public committees and industry bodies than I can as an individual designer engaged in engineering projects. So I have come around to the opinion that as an engineer I should be influencing others for better overall outcomes and not just implementing technical solutions to real world problems.
But I think it is a bit short sighted to single out engineers as responsible for the modern paradigm of metrics driven development and decision making processes. I see similar lacks at most professional levels. Let's list some:
- doctors
- lawyers and barristers
- financial advisers and insurers
- bankers
- politicians
- company executives
- ... you fill in the blank ...
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