Where were you after one year?
Where were you after one year?
(OP)
Hi guys,
I have recently been unmotivated at work and feel I have not progress my career quite how I expected once finishing school.
What attributes should I have obtained after one years design experience. I have a good understanding of structural analysis, and can design concrete slabs and columns and steelwork to the appropriate codes. But when it comes to construction side of things I have absolutely no idea?
What should be my attributes after one years experience?
I have recently been unmotivated at work and feel I have not progress my career quite how I expected once finishing school.
What attributes should I have obtained after one years design experience. I have a good understanding of structural analysis, and can design concrete slabs and columns and steelwork to the appropriate codes. But when it comes to construction side of things I have absolutely no idea?
What should be my attributes after one years experience?





RE: Where were you after one year?
If you feel unmotivated, determine why. Guaranteed, your life is no longer going to be like school. You are fully on your own to make or break your own career. Feeling unmotivated can lead to acting unmotivated. This will have detrimental results.
Regards,
RE: Where were you after one year?
RE: Where were you after one year?
Hg
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RE: Where were you after one year?
Good luck!
Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."
RE: Where were you after one year?
Seems like some things in certain school courses you do not "get" until later in life. Don't be discouraged.
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: Where were you after one year?
Then WHAM! You graduate and get into the "real world". All of a sudden you are expected to do one thing well and that's it. All of a sudden a four year research project is nothing. Six months is nothing. Deadlines seem optional, not hard and fast.
What I'm saying is I understand how you feel. You're probably frustrated that you're not working at your capacity and not learning as much as you'd like. Be patient. You'll get there. You'll earn the respect of your coworkers, you'll get the chance to go places and see things. But also remember that your job in college was to learn, but your job today is to do whatever the company hired you to do.
If you're looking for more challenge, have you considered joining the ASCE and becoming an active member? You may find opportunities to branch out and take on leadership roles so you can see civil (or whatever) engineering outside your field.
RE: Where were you after one year?
Not strictly true. Your job may be to find out new stuff for others to then learn.
- Steve
RE: Where were you after one year?
I'd say that cedarbluffranch pretty much hit the nail on the head. In college all you do is learn, learn, learn. Then you get into the real world and it's do, do, do. It's definitely a bit of a shock, and I'm guessing the only way to mitigate it is to keep grinding on.
RE: Where were you after one year?
RE: Where were you after one year?
What I've noticed lately is that I have enough work to do that even if I don't feel like working I can do a simple, boring but important job all morning long. I can always find work something to do these days. That's the biggest difference from now and two years ago.
RE: Where were you after one year?
TTFN
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RE: Where were you after one year?
1. Do some construction. Whether it's building cabinets in someone's (a friend's, relatvie's etc.) workshop or working for a contractor on a multi-million dollar project, it helps understand practically how things go together.
2. Work on construction engineering projects. If you can work on these sorts of projects, especially when working for skilled and experienced contractors, you can gain quite a bit of knowledge of construction methods.
3. Befriend people who work in the construction industry and know what they are doing.
4. Design things in ways that make them hard and expensive to build. The angry phonecalls and change requests from contractors will give you an idea of how things work.
Construction was one of the things I had a decent handle on after a short period of working, as I followed the above four steps. I spent time in school working as a carpenter's apprentice and spent half my time on construction engineering projects. Several of my friends from university went into project management and I still keep in touch with them. And of course, I did make the obligatory mistake of coming up with some hard to build designs.
RE: Where were you after one year?
They stuck me in Design for a couple of years, having been in Development for the previous 6 years, and I loathed it, by and large. But I did learn a lot.
Cheers
Greg Locock
SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: Where were you after one year?
Twoballcane,
To say an engineer isn't wet behind the ears until 5 years is a little concerning to me. I look around the Australian design industry at the moment and young guys (<3 years) outnumber the senior guys (>3 years) three to one.
I found myself being teamed with a "mentor" who struggles to keep himself organised, let alone help me out when I struggling with designs.
RE: Where were you after one year?
After a year, I knew that I would not be with that company for any more than two years. While I thoroughly enjoyed the work, the benefits were great and I would use the next couple of years to enhance my experience as a metallurgist, I believed that the company could not be sustained and I would need to find work in other metallurgical arenas for long term fulfillment. The company did go out of business ten years after I left.
After a year or so, you should know what your company does, how it functions, what you can reasonably be expected to be doing in the near and long term and whether your near or long term goals can reasonably be met therein.
Discuss your aspirations with your supervisor and/or with a fellow engineer, who you trust. It appears that you will soon have to resolve your current dilemma.
RE: Where were you after one year?
Software development sounds good, how do I get into this industry. I'm a amateur programmer and like to point out the flaws that make the existing software on the market unfriendly to the user or what output should be presented to the user.
I certainly don't want to lose my job because I am behind the mark of where I should be at the moment, and likewise I don't want to leave my first job for the fact it will look poor on a resume.
RE: Where were you after one year?
Luck is a difficult thing to verify and therefore should be tested often. - Me
RE: Where were you after one year?
I'm a little over 2 years in.
I feel like I am so much further along than I was out of college. I was absolutely clueless out of college, and thanks to the small company atmosphere, I've been able to get a lot of help from the boss and other older engineer.
I wish I spent more time learning the codes more earlier on, so I would remember to check certain things.
That's just me though.
RC
RC
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
RE: Where were you after one year?
RE: Where were you after one year?
What can I do to show that I am "showing" initiative?
RE: Where were you after one year?
With power plants there is always room for improvement. You show initiative by investigating problems without being told to by your boss, offering methods of improvement, etc. Also, when work is less hectic, you can offer your assistance to others. My willingness to work on various assignments is what enabled me to get assigned to large project as one of the workers and then move on to another project as the head manager.
RE: Where were you after one year?
There are a few things to not that probably have not occurred to you.
Firstly, as a recent graduate you are probably getting some of the least challenging jobs in the office. This is the best way to cut in a graduate and also saves the more experienced engineers for the more difficult projects.
Secondly, there is much much more to engineering than doing the numbers. You will gradually be introduced to scheme design, client liaison, project management, quoting e.t.c. further on in your career as you progress.
As you show that you have learned, your employer will be more willing to give you more challenging projects. I would suggest you talk to other engineers about the type of project that they are doing and if you hear something interesting then ask your manager if you can get involved in that type of project. Also in bigger projects you may be able to help out doing small portions under other engineers.
as you show more potential, you will be exposed to a greater variety of projects.
I would also push to do site inspections as this is an important part of learning construction methods.
Here is a good link for some steel e-lectures, they are based on american codes but will no doubt be of interest:
ht
http:/
And a final note, you will never run out of new things to learn in this industry unlike many of our mechanical, chemical and electrical friends our discipline is very broadly focused and as such you will learn much more after college than you did during your education.
RE: Where were you after one year?
We hired a new graduate civil/structural engineer recently. He was in a similar position as you apparently are after about 18 mos on the job. He asked my advice and I told him to talk to our Director, who found him field work on one of our major construction sites for about 6 months, where he proved invaluable. After returning (work completed), he again approached our Director and asked if he could transfer to the corporation's newly purchased Engineering firm out of state to better prepare him for taking his PE examinations in about 3 years and we were able to transfer him.