Hey Everyone,
For context, I work with a medium sized multidisciplinary engineering firm (<50 people), myself being Mechanical by background but have moved into a more Lead/PM role recently.
Since joining the company, I’ve had a concern on the company’s attitude towards ‘quality’. In my previous roles, I’ve seen projects from concept, through to detailed design and construction so have full appreciation on design stages, level of detail and typical stage gates and so on… but noticed here that the staff (and senior project management team) have odd resistance to delivering quality deliverables and simply work towards providing the ‘bare minimum’ with a hint of ambiguity.
When I say quality, I’m referring more towards an attitude which ensures the Engineering firm is delivering comprehensive packages to clients, not only meeting the client expectations but; reassures the client that the solutions proposed are robust and transparent (on time and on budget etc…)
An example of this, say there is a project where we are the ‘clients engineer’ on a operations expansion project, we are responsible for designing and managing the integration into the sites to a existing operation at concept design level (I am lead engineer of my discipline); you can imagine there will be multiple interfaces, now in my eyes these interfaces need to identified with risk mitigation proposed ASAP. I highlight this proposing we at least cover ourselves by identification receiving responses like ‘that is detailed design level’ ‘too much detail’ ‘focus on your role’.
Coordination with other disciplines internally is a challenge on it’s own, where the respective discipline leads just snub against coordination prefer to work in isolation forever butting heads. The clients are typically ‘semi intelligent’ by way that they are of engineering background but not design.
I appreciate, time is money! In fact I’ve provided advice to the management team on budgeting/resources to deliver, in my view, a comprehensive package (which they accepted) but, senior managements preference is to almost design in ambiguity/confusion/cost cutting into the project where is can CLEARLY be avoided!
I’ve also discussed with the management team and understand the companies’ ambition is to avoid explicit detail design and construction level of detail but focus on conceptual levels of design, but sell the packages to clients from the view that they are a hybrid of concept/detail design…
So Engineers and Directors of the world, I ask, do you care about delivering quality and the best value for your clients or do you feel that the fees do not permit such a luxury and as such, the bare minimum to keep clients happy is justified?
For context, I work with a medium sized multidisciplinary engineering firm (<50 people), myself being Mechanical by background but have moved into a more Lead/PM role recently.
Since joining the company, I’ve had a concern on the company’s attitude towards ‘quality’. In my previous roles, I’ve seen projects from concept, through to detailed design and construction so have full appreciation on design stages, level of detail and typical stage gates and so on… but noticed here that the staff (and senior project management team) have odd resistance to delivering quality deliverables and simply work towards providing the ‘bare minimum’ with a hint of ambiguity.
When I say quality, I’m referring more towards an attitude which ensures the Engineering firm is delivering comprehensive packages to clients, not only meeting the client expectations but; reassures the client that the solutions proposed are robust and transparent (on time and on budget etc…)
An example of this, say there is a project where we are the ‘clients engineer’ on a operations expansion project, we are responsible for designing and managing the integration into the sites to a existing operation at concept design level (I am lead engineer of my discipline); you can imagine there will be multiple interfaces, now in my eyes these interfaces need to identified with risk mitigation proposed ASAP. I highlight this proposing we at least cover ourselves by identification receiving responses like ‘that is detailed design level’ ‘too much detail’ ‘focus on your role’.
Coordination with other disciplines internally is a challenge on it’s own, where the respective discipline leads just snub against coordination prefer to work in isolation forever butting heads. The clients are typically ‘semi intelligent’ by way that they are of engineering background but not design.
I appreciate, time is money! In fact I’ve provided advice to the management team on budgeting/resources to deliver, in my view, a comprehensive package (which they accepted) but, senior managements preference is to almost design in ambiguity/confusion/cost cutting into the project where is can CLEARLY be avoided!
I’ve also discussed with the management team and understand the companies’ ambition is to avoid explicit detail design and construction level of detail but focus on conceptual levels of design, but sell the packages to clients from the view that they are a hybrid of concept/detail design…
So Engineers and Directors of the world, I ask, do you care about delivering quality and the best value for your clients or do you feel that the fees do not permit such a luxury and as such, the bare minimum to keep clients happy is justified?
