Wearing multiple hats 3

[ds94]

Hi all,

I'm a young engineer (27 yo) with about 4 yrs experience, and I work for a local power utility.

I have a lot of different responsibilities and I was wondering if you have any advice for managing this?

I'll give you some examples:

1. Project engineer for substation design. Includes working with the drafting team, ordering equipment, coordinating contractors and site work, tracking the budget, etc.
2. Project manager for various distribution capital programs (for things like transformers and reclosers) throughout the state, mostly requires just keeping track of work orders and schedules.
3. Construction manager of distribution feeder line work. Isn't Construction Management an actual trade that people take at a college? I feel underprepared to take on these tasks. I'm not the foreman (the crews have their own foreman) but I'm required to "keep an eye on things". As a guy who's never worked as a power line tech I'm not sure what to look for besides blatantly obvious errors that most people would pick out.

These jobs are all with different work groups. Even though I have one official supervisor (ie the guy who approves my time sheet), I really report to many different people depending on the project.

It is great to get exposure to multiple things as I feel like it will make me an asset, but it causes me problems sometimes when I'm not sure how much is expected of me by any particular group at any time. Since I don't have one specific role, I don't have a certain set of responsibilities that I'm focusing on - instead I'm focusing on the particulars of each individual project. The result is that sometimes different groups expect things from me that I was totally unaware of. In other words it's hard to get aligned with everyone.

Thoughts?

Thanks

 

[GregLocock]

If you don't feel like you are fire fighting all the time then you are probably doing a good job.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[zeusfaber]

Well it makes a great change from reading complaints from young engineers who feel that their manifold talents are wasted in their current job.

I imagine one of two things is going on - either the organisation is spread so thin that it's all (unsupervised) hands to whichever pump most needs working in an attempt to postpone the inevitable disaster, or people have recognised you as a versatile pair of hands they can trust to learn on the job without doing anything stupid. It shouldn't be hard to tell which it is.

Assuming it's the second of those scenarios, I think you're right to recognise the opportunities you've been given. Something you could consider is talking to your supervisor (to forestall hurt feelings) and seeing if you can come up with some sort of mentoring arrangement with someone (preferably a bit above you in the pecking order but with a lot more experience) who you can use to help you hone your sense of what you need to do because it's your fair share of the hard work, what extra you should seize as an opportunity to learn, what you should approach with more caution (to make sure you don't kill anyone or bankrupt the firm in your blind enthusiasm), and what is stuff that you can legitimately take or leave depending on how many favours you want to do your colleagues. If this gives you more confidence, makes you an even safer pair of hands and gives the mentor the satisfaction of seeing some of their hard-won experience wearing off on the next generation, then it works to everybody's benefit and needn't take up huge amounts of anybody's time.

A.

 

[SlideRuleEra]

ds94 - I retired from an electric utility and had an assortment of simultaneous assignments, primarily in generation.
Make use of the bona fide management technique "Management by Walking Around". Our corporate president was an big believer in the concept. Talk to job foremen about how things are going. Keep your eyes open to look for things that appear "odd", then ask about them. Over time, you will get the knack of what "looks" right and what does not. The key is to keep an open mind and use your engineering background as the foundation for a deep understanding for the intent of projects. All of this take time and can be professionally rewarding, don't try to rush.

http://www.SlideRuleEra.net

http://www.VacuumTubeEra.net

 

[coloeng]

In all of your positions take the opportunity to ask questions. Especially ask the foreman and workers why things are done the way they are. They have a lot of experience and you can learn a lot. As I was told when I was a young engineer, you only learned about 10% of what you need to know in college. The rest of it you learn from the people you work with.

 

[rotw]

Handle what you can handle and do it well, means to the highest level of professionalism.
If people are frustrated, let them be frustrated and just keep on going, you can do nothing about it. I think this is one way to cope with your situation: once in a while stop and look backward, pick up one piece of work you have delivered, now answer to this: did you achieve that piece of work to the best of your engineering abilities ? did you receive positive feedback ? Target the feedback of your customer (internal / external) and make sure they are impressed by the quality of your service. This is the personal reward. Use this as a way to fuel your progress. Think on the long run and protect your self confidence. I would not suggest do a job like this for a lifetime though.

 

[Ron]

ds94....go back and read SlideRuleEra's post again and again. That is sage advice that you'd do well to follow. I know of no one here with a more diverse, yet cohesive background than he. Even with all of his years of experience, he is a student of engineering to this day!

You have an opportunity and it seems you wisely recognize that. Take advantage of the opportunity and exploit it to your gain for the technical, the administrative and the management facets. You'll look back in 20 years and say....Yeah....I got this!

 

[tickle]

To me construction management can be boiled down to two simplistic things. Making sure the construction matches the drawings and that foreman is preparing for the next task. ie be one step behind and one step in front all the time. Hopefully the foreman is thinking beyond the next task, but still try to be one step ahead of them.

The learning opportunity is translating the design package / drawings to the lumps of material and how they are installed - which requires "Management by Walking Around".

To overcome the despair you highlight of not meeting peoples expectations / responsibilities; you need to define the them in advance and report on the expectations (maybe a quick weekly proforma response). Once you have done this on a few projects you will be defining the expectations that hopefully match what they want (or more importantly what they need).

 

[BEMPE16524]

i'm wearing thousands of hats...
but my motivation is that one day i will know everything about the industry that i am in and everybody will rely on me.
even if that's not going to happen, at least i got some good knowledge in case something unexpected happen, for example you were retrenched.