The academic view of communication identifies a sender and a receiver, with a message encoded by the sender and then decoded by the receiver. But that’s somewhat unhelpful when you’re trying to find out whether the widget will actually be delivered on time and on budget.

Communication is obviously an essential competency. The irony though is: “I have too many emails!”. Perhaps communication is more than emails.

Academically, the decoding of your encoded message to the receiver should not make them work harder. In reality, try to make sense. Engineering is as much about collaboration as it is about calculations.

Performance in any job, and performing in life in general, is a given. All the world’s a stage, right? We perform every moment of the day. And sometimes, people are watching.

Performance for a thriving professional engineer might be as simple, or complex, as doing what you said you’d do. Perform as expected; it should be straightforward. Keep to schedules, recognise the cost and safety implications of decisions, and produce high technical quality outputs.

Demonstrating the ability to perform in a role, while applying our ongoing duty of care to the public, is a performance I always like to see.

Before solving a problem, it should be well-defined as a problem, and, preferably, also describe what it looks like when the problem is solved.

But stating a problem isn’t solving the problem.

And problems don’t have to be humungous behemoths. Small, daily action on problems is satisfying too.

Tangible, tacit, sometimes costly and time-consuming steps of taking action creates memorable experiences.

But that’s hard. It’s much easier, and a quicker dopamine hit, to scroll our phones for more problems.

I think taking action on engineering problems means you can clearly state what you did to succeed at solving the problem.

Judgement is defined as the “ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions”. The problem with that definition is its subjectivity: who decides what the sensible conclusion is?

It’s hard to teach “judgement” in the engineering context; and how to develop the skill is a bit murky. Being exposed to situations requiring judgement might be the best way.

Examples requiring judgement include monitoring the quality of other peoples’ work fairly, diagnosing performance deficiencies, or detecting impending failure of systems, assets, or processes.

Having good judgement is valuable to you and your workplace while being a thriving, effective engineer.

Differentiating between ‘standard’ engineering knowledge and ‘advanced’ engineering knowledge can be a tricky exercise. In my case, as a generalist engineer, I’m a bit hard-pressed to find examples of applying advanced theory-based understanding of engineering fundamentals.

I’ve built many calculation spreadsheets, but mostly for basic math equations. I’ve reviewed many P&IDs (process and instrument diagrams), but whether that’s advanced knowledge is debatable. But I am involved in industry research programs, and so I do keep up that way.

Utilising advanced engineering knowledge is a required element of technical proficiency for professional engineers. And, it’s a differentiator, leading to new innovations.

I remember working on flood mapping for a pipeline crossing a river in Brisbane. I was working with an expert hydrologist in Melbourne. I knew Brisbane’s wet season is in February. The Melbourne expert kept trying to correct me: “it rains more here in winter (July)!” They’d assumed the same weather patterns. They aren’t.

There are plenty of transferable skills unrelated to location, but there is a subset which unwaveringly require local knowledge. Much of this category is unwritten, tacit, and intangible, and you’ll only figure it out by being there.

Local engineering knowledge feeds into overall engineering technical proficiency.

Analysing a problem includes the steps of “define, investigate and resolve”. Identifying the main issue that manifests as the problem is sometimes harder than it seems. It’s often easier to present a solution with the problem not defined, or sometimes the solution doesn’t actually solve the problem.

Also, it seems once we’re into the workaday monotony, we spend more time replying to emails and going to meetings. Hint: those emails and meetings are probably trying to solve problems. Identify them!

Problem analysis is a key element of technical proficiency, and thriving professional engineers embrace the challenge of problem analysis. Daily.

Creativity and innovation are obvious and common requests in job advertisements. But they are a little esoteric when trying to demonstrate evidence of them.

For example, developing a new way to display data isn’t attention-getting “wow” creativity, but look into how data was presented (poorly) for the Challenger O-Ring decision-makers, and we can see how important thinking creatively can be.

And we forget that innovation usually includes quite a few failures before the headline-grabbing “Success!”. Those previous failures can be costly, both monetarily and mentally.

Creativity and innovation are elements of technical proficiency competence, and thriving professional engineers embrace them.

Evaluation is the making of a judgement about the amount, number, or value of something. It’s an assessment of verified input information to identify positive or negative attributes. Often there is a checklist or ranking system to record the evaluation outcomes.

In order to evaluate well, we need to think systematically, and we need understand the interconnectedness of the many decisions involved with evaluation. Evaluating the outcomes and impacts of engineering activities means we think of the future consequences of our actions and decisions.

Evaluation is an element of technical proficiency competence, which professional engineers should strive to do well.

Here’s the list of the competencies that Engineers Australia has identified to obtain “chartered” designation. Like them or loathe them, or wonder how in the world to ‘prove’ you have these, regardless, I think these are a good round up of traits any good engineer should have, chartered or not:

Evaluation of outcomes and impacts, creativity and innovation, problem analysis, local engineering knowledge, advanced engineering knowledge, judgement, taking action, performance, communication, meeting legal and regulatory requirements, identifying assessing and managing risks, engaging with relevant community and stakeholders, developing safe and sustainable solutions, responsibility, competent practise, and dealing with ethical issues.

A recognisable but not referenced often enough image is the U-shaped curve.

This applies to hero’s journeys, habit forming, and difficult projects. We start out all enthusiastic and energetic, heading down the curve with momentum. Next is the flat part in the middle, where things are hard and we want to quit. But it’s not over until we put in the hard yards, and then we see some successes, and the climb up the other side of the valley is tolerable because at least by then we can see progress and results.

The U-shaped curve is real. Keep at it!

The purpose of an engineering degree, or any degree with a technical focus, should be so the graduate can, and wants to, do the engineering, science, or technical work. The reasons for getting an engineering degree should not solely be to be a manager or CEO.

While I agree we need technical people to also be able to communicate and collaborate, and to lead, I also think we need our technical people to want to do the technical work. Engineers should want to design, build, maintain, solve problems, create new innovations, do technical things. Better yet, do all of those.

When I was in high school, back in the late 1980s in Calgary, Canada, there was a debate team. Or, I’m pretty sure there was. I wasn’t on it, and (regrettably) had no interest in being on it. (However, I did take a typing class, and I am forever grateful for that, because touch typing without looking is just excellent).

I regret not being exposed to formalised debating, because that is a skill so worth having. The ability to develop a coherent position based on a structure like “what, why, when, who” is central to communication. That’s the next excellence.

Journalling as an activity has a weird vibe around it (Dear Diary, anyone?). It conjures up images of teenage girls, world weary travellers, or, poets. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those demographics, but journalling isn’t something associated with technical decision makers or engineers.

Whenever we need to make a point, whether through writing or conversation, there’s definitely something about writing it out, by hand, before the main event. The slowness of handwriting allows the brain to form deeper reasoning.

Maybe don’t call it journalling; call it decision-making, or thinking it through, or working it out. It works.

“The Art of Gathering” by Priya Parker is 280 pages about how we meet, and why it matters. I’m always impressed when a good writer can take something benign, like “meetings” and write coherently about how to do it better. Like Seinfeld being a show about nothing, it’s the nothing in our lives that can be most interesting.

How we meet, and why it matters, will become so much more important in the future. We’ll soon realise that talking and listening are once again pretty good ways to communicate. Like it was a hundred years ago, before, well, all this.

This isn’t the first time that jobs have been disrupted by technology. Calculators and computers of fifty years ago changed math and engineering. The digital camera changed photography.

I’m not completely “concerned” about AI being involved now in writing, because it’s a tool rather than a cheating device. Just like calculators and digital cameras: they changed how we got the output. But someone still had to put in the input.

That’s the thing: I have access to calculators and digital cameras, but I’m not an expert, while others are. Same with quality of AI output: the input context matters too.

I heard this recently, I can’t remember where, but it’s kind of stuck with me:

“Science” is a series of steps, taken by people, committed to being honest and being transparent about those steps, to check out a hypothesis.

Science should be a bit mysterious (it’s not easy), but also, others should be able to take the same steps to test the conclusion.

So, science might be a verb: it’s something you do. And those steps taken to do that science, others can replicate.

(Does anyone else from the 1980s, when you see or say “Science!”, think of Thomas Dolby?)

The book Antifragile, by Nassim Taleb, is a hard slog to read. It’s not terribly accessibly writing, which is a shame, because the concept of being antifragile is excellent.

The opposite of fragile (breakable) is not robust, but rather the uncommon word antifragile.

Robust and resilient mean getting back up after a knock, or withstanding hardships with fervour. This is important, but being antifragile is even better.

Antifragile is taking on the hardships and getting a little better from them. Like purposely taking a boat into a storm to test it, and yourself. Going to the gym. Doing hard things.

I’m not one for making predictions, but here we are: Reading will become the new black, so to speak.

Reading well, and synthesizing what is read, will become more important than writing. Because, as is becoming more and more apparent, the text on any screen could quite possibly be written by a chatbot.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. Well, there might be. Yes, there will be. But as our knowledge work evolves in this new reality, which might take years, the ability to read and summarise and understand: that will be the killer app for us humans.

Commitments with other people, without an end identified, are a problem for me.

I mean meetings, social gatherings, visits from family: these are wonderful and excellent and so important to connect and collaborate. But I’ve discovered that without an ending time understood, whether implicitly (the weekend ends or the pub closes) or explicitly (hard finish time for meetings), then I’m surprisingly, funnily, uncomfortable.

That insight helps me to manage my stress. I see it now: invitations to join never-ending committees, or projects without a goal, are not in my best interest.

Commitments to myself are different: those are lifelong habits.