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Basic Qualities of a Successful Engineer

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By itsRashad

In an engineering education, the fundamental purpose of the college/university years is to enable you in a short period to time, to learn of, and to profit by, the experiences, discoveries, and interpretations of the thousands who have gone before you in the application of nature’s laws and material for the use of mankind. For you, an engineering graduate at the threshold of a professional career, your total education has only begun.

So, what is required of you as an engineer? An engineer must consciously develop some very specific and basic qualities. Professor William Wickenden, in his booklet A Professional Guide for Young Engineers, presents them as follows:

1. Courage and integrity are prime requisites for a successful engineer. Do not continue in engineering if you are afraid to take calculated risks and to make decisions on the basis of available information; very seldom will you know in advance the certain answer to any major engineering problem. You must be willing to live up to an inflexible code of integrity and honestly. The habit of straight thinking and honest action is just as important to an engineer as is the habit of cleanliness to a surgeon.

2. A thirst for knowledge is an attribute you must possess if you hope to succeed in professional life. The engineer must have the native inclination to delve into the fundamental truths of mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

3. Imagination is a factor vital to successful engineering. Every engineering product, be it great or small is someone’s mental picture that has become a reality. If you find it difficult to see things in your mind’s eye as they would be in actuality, you should re-examine your motives for entering engineering.

4. Sound judgment is a requisite for the successful engineer. You must be able to see all aspects of a question or problem and place a proper value on each phase of a situation and to foresee and estimate the consequences likely to result from each step taken in the solution of the problem or project.

5. Accuracy in thought and action is essential if you are to be a successful engineer. It must be cultivated if you hope to succeed in technical pursuits.

6. An instinct for economy, the economical use of manpower, energy, and materials in producing the most effective results is most important.

7. An aptitude for leadership is very important to the individual engineer’s professional advancement in this modern civilization. You have a challenging opportunity to constructively lead as an engineer and as a private citizen in the field of civic and social problems. If humanity is to receive the maximum benefit of the engineer’s work, then you, as an engineer, must assume interest and responsibility for applying your accomplishments most effectively for the welfare of humanity.

8. Ingenuity, the ability to be creative, is another essential ingredient for a successful engineer. The engineer who can take commonplace situations and apply imagination of conception and creativity to produce and improve results will contribute the greatest benefit to mankind.

9. Hard work is essential to give strength and vigor to the intellect and to give it the dimension of depth. Intelligence is necessary to give effectiveness, honor, and dignity to labor.

10. The ability to communicate effectively can enhance every other quality which the engineer possesses. And without it, all other qualities are shadowed. Especially as a young engineer, you will do well to emphasize this phase of your education.

Four things you, as an engineer, must have:

· a mastery of applied science

· the power to visualize your ideas by imagination

· the power to express you ideas clearly to others in speech or writing or drawings

· an instinct for economy of effort and of cost

As engineer’s nature, three-quarters of them take on executive responsibilities and many become executives. Only rarely does an engineer get far without a good understanding of human nature and the art of managing people.

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