Raising children and working a fulfilling career should not have to battle. Many choose to put one on hold to prioritise the other, many feel forced into that decision. There’s no instruction manual for the perfect ‘balance’, but here’s Sinead’s thoughts.

A project manager should know how to mitigate conflict by being able to identify the resolution that has the least impact on the project timeline, budget, and quality.

As a business owner, engineer, project manager, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, wannabe runner, lover of cooking and eater of too much takeaway, I certainly do not have all the answers to managing time. What I do have is a work ‘to-do list’ and a strategy of how to prioritise it.

There are so many aspects to communication that we are taught in project management, however as the world we are living in is becoming progressively more digital, that’s all changing. While email is a fantastic tool for transferring information, it is not a medium designed to completely replace conversation.

One of the most valuable assets you can have as a project manager is good common sense. Unfortunately, it is not exactly something that you can study. Our philosophy to common sense is simple: if you can define it, you can practice it.

While networking may not be written directly into the job description, it can add immeasurable value to the development and career of an engineer.

Up-and-coming engineers who want to make their mark tend to set their sights on big cities. That’s where there are multitudes of major projects, and major projects mean major opportunities, right? While the skills you develop in these roles are valuable, they can be very niche.

Engineers have a multitude of tools at hand to assist with their jobs. These serve to greatly reduce calculation effort, improve accuracy, shorten the time required for rework and generally allow for more refined designs. An inability or unwillingness to sanity check the outputs obtained using such tools is a risk to the suitability and efficacy of the produced designs.

Over the past 20 years there has been a significant decline in the number of design drafters in engineering offices. Where there used to be 3 or 4 drafters to an engineer, there are now up to 20 engineers to 1 drafter. The need for drawing is not decreasing, so who is drafting?