Lessons for Young Engineers
Advice for those just starting out
Structural engineering is a stressful profession, especially
for young engineers. The construction industry is highly
competitive regardless of your niche in it, and clients are
always looking for designs to be maximally efficient and executed
as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, projects run even faster today
than they did a decade ago, leaving less time for young engineers
to learn how to produce quality work quickly and communicate
effectively with their clients.
As a young engineer, your top concern is probably not efficiency
or schedule, but rather doing your job competently and avoiding
unpleasant consequences if you do not. It is not uncommon to
make a simple mathematical error, make an invalid assumption or
estimate, misinterpret a code section or miss an important note
QA/QC – YOUNG ENGINEERS
that should have been added to the drawings. Consider these as
learning experiences.
You will soon appreciate that there are many safeguards to
ensure appropriate design solutions but remember that the best
way to gain your colleagues’ trust and earn more responsibility is
to produce consistently good work.
Review of your work through your company’s quality assurance/
quality control (QA/QC) process is intended to catch invalid
assumptions, improve the design solutions and ensure code compliance.
You will learn to welcome this oversight. Any issues that
slip past the QA/QC process are likely to be spotted by detailers
since they closely examine the project drawings as they produce
shop drawings. Experienced contractors also often question
By Jim Lintz, P.E., S.E., LEED AP BD+C, LJB Inc.
vertolet/123RF
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