July/August 2017

Concepts
Project Management As the Engineering Team Sport

BY CHRISTOPHER B. ACKERMAN, P.E., PMP

Much of the practice of engineering is procured by our clients and provided by us as individuals or by our employers through a contract or another type of business agreement. Such agreements determine the scope, cost, and schedule requirements that constitute the triple constraint of a project. Project management is, therefore, essential to both the practice and the business of engineering. But as a profession, do we consistently give project management adequate thought and attention? Why do some engineers seem to struggle with managing projects? As a learned profession, shouldn’t we be getting better at managing projects? Below are some thoughts that address these questions.

Many engineers lack education and formal training in the art of project management.

Many engineers struggle with applying the principles and techniques of project management, and probably for a variety of reasons. Simply stated, the behavior and performance of people doing project work don’t follow the types of natural laws and conventions of practice that we as engineers learned and are accustomed to applying to solve our client’s technical problems. Although some project management tools are inherently quantitative (e.g., critical path method scheduling, earned value management), the actual coordination of project work and leadership of project teams tends to focus on managing stakeholder expectations, communicating information to multiple audiences, and motivating people inside and outside of our organizations.

The best project managers are usually effective leaders of project teams who also understand human behavior and possess good communication and other inter-
personal skills. Perhaps we should be more open to learning aspects of the social sciences related to human motivation theory and the dynamics of teams that seem to influence project outcomes.

An engineering project manager needs skills beyond engineering.

The art of project management is mostly concerned with human behavior, team dynamics, communications, and other factors independent of the actual project scope, industry, or even culture. An important characteristic of a good project manager in most circumstances is having a balance between design, technical, organizational, communication, financial, and leadership skills. Most undergraduate engineering programs in the US address the design process and technical knowledge but not many of the soft skills.

Self-awareness is a prerequisite to achieving such a balance. Acquiring a good balance of these skills may be aided by an individual engineer’s personality and temperament, but it can also be achieved through experience and deliberate professional development. The social sciences provide some diagnostic tools that can help a person understand his or her individual strengths and weaknesses and identify an aptitude and inclination to assume the role and responsibilities of a project manager. Perhaps senior engineers can explicitly consider these factors along with technical issues of developing our junior engineers.

We don’t sufficiently consider history or look outside of the engineering profession.

Let’s face it—the most significant historical engineering achievements throughout human history were executed as projects by groups of people (although often behind schedule and over budget). Even today, the necessity of project management is not unique to engineering, our allied design professions, or other industry sectors. The Project Management Institute was founded in 1969 to, among other things, initiate the professionalization of managing projects. Perhaps the single most recognized publication from PMI is A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, which is now in its fifth edition, and has become one of the worldwide de facto standards for delivery projects. Does your office have a copy?

PMI is not unlike NSPE, in that it represents the collective interests of a professional community of practice. Although engineering and project management are distinctly different professions, there are areas of overlap, for instance in areas of professional ethics and continuing education.

Too many of us deviate from the fundamentals of project management.

William Ramroth Jr. authored the book Project Management for Design Professionals, targeted to an audience that includes engineers. This excellent book is a valuable resource for aspiring, new, and experienced engineering project managers alike. One chapter outlines his 14 project management rules of thumb that resonated not only with me but numerous participants in a recent online discussion of project management on the Open Forum of NSPE’s Communities (https://community.nspe.org). The root causes of many common project management challenges in our profession, however, are ignorance of, or disregard for, such rules of thumb.

Much like science, contemporary engineering practice is founded on the “shoulders of giants”—on accumulated knowledge and experience of those who practiced before us. Although such rules of thumb, and similar expressions of project management wisdom, do not appear in engineering textbooks, they truly belong alongside our engineering references—even if they are already committed to memory.

NSPE member Christopher B. Ackerman, P.E., PMP, is passionate about the built environment. He was a project manager for an ENR Top 10 design firm and teaches project management to engineering graduate students. Ackerman is the director of vertical structures at the Millennium Challenge Corporation, an independent US foreign aid agency.