List of Contributions

James M. Williams, P.E.

POA&M Structural Engineering, PLC

Contact Details

POA&M Structural Engineering, PLC
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James Williams, P.E.


POA&M Structural Engineering, PLC

My Content

1 to 20 of 42 total

RE: 2023 New Years Resolution

Posted By James Williams 01-14-2023 11:28 AM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
My New Year's resolutions are to 1) find a new Taekwondo School/family in NC; and 2) find a PE for the office in VA. ------------------------------ James Williams P.E., M.ASCE Principal/Owner POA&M Structural Engineering, PLC Yorktown, VA ------------------------------

RE: So Organized that it's Disorganized

Posted By James Williams 11-08-2022 10:51 PM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures), centralized databases, file management, and data base maintenance. Of course, I am guilty as charged. I have redundant reference, admin and other folders on various drives on different computers, and external storage drives. What seems like a good idea becomes a ...

RE: Work and Volunteering-Related Travel Experiences

Posted By James Williams 10-20-2022 07:14 PM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
As a senior engineer and supervisor/"manager", we would travel up to Crystal City, VA for meetings on several occasions. The company I worked for sent several of us to Shock and Vibration Symposiums in Minneapolis, MN and Virginia Beach, VA; recruiting trips with Human Resources. While all the ...

RE: Best ways to learn new material

Posted By James Williams 09-15-2022 03:52 PM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
Samantha, In my opinion, learning how to find and where to find information needed to get your work done. Being able to convert or relate aspects of the assignments into real world scenarios. When it comes to group study, it depends on your method of learning. As an engineer, there will always ...

RE: Numbers of Names

Posted By James Williams 09-06-2022 11:18 AM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
Name tags are used at most social events and some large meetings have had the same or meeting minutes with the list of attendees at the top. Someone once said that you should use and repeat their name during the discussion. Start or end the questions with their names. Someone once said to create ...

RE: Sowing Distrust

Posted By James Williams 08-30-2022 07:53 AM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
Employees should not take it personally. IT ONLY TAKES ONE. Chances are that ONE is no longer around to tell their story given their release due to the violation of company policy. Chances are it started over 30 years ago and ONE is released every decade. I bet there are a lot of folks that know ...

RE: Time for a Change?

Posted By James Williams 08-22-2022 05:29 PM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
Brandy, providing that feeling or feedback is something that management, project or group leads may take for granted. Depending of the level of associated stress and the leader, that recognition/feedback may not come until the source of the stress is removed. Typically, there is at least one that realizes ...

RE: Time for a Change?

Posted By James Williams 08-09-2022 12:28 PM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
Spoiler Alert (LOL!): Being a young engineer is like the character of "Daniel LaRusso" needing to learn Karate in the 1984 movie "The Karate Kid". Impatient and not understanding how he was learning the basics by washing and waxing a car (did he also do the hanging laundry drill). Wanting to perform ...

RE: Refusing to Sign PE Hours

Posted By James Williams 08-08-2022 06:32 PM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
I found this interesting tidbit under TN Rules of Professional Conduct - "A registrant possessing knowledge of an applicant's qualifications for registration shall cooperate with the applicant and/or the Board by responding appropriately regarding those qualifications when requested to do so. A registrant ...

RE: Time for a Change?

Posted By James Williams 08-08-2022 06:32 PM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
Christopher, let me lead by stating that our perceptions of our project contributions are often subjective, singular and relative. When a task or job one is performing does not match the job description, one may "feel" as though one is not contributing (relatively speaking). There are cases where ...

RE: Time for a Change?

Posted By James Williams 08-05-2022 10:38 AM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
Having a professional development plan associated with one's company provides a path upon which to focus. However, I always asked myself the following questions: 1) Am I learning or growing professionally? 2) Am I helping or contributing? If the answer was "no" to both questions, I looked ...

RE: Tracking your Professional Development Hours

Posted By James Williams 06-29-2022 10:00 AM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
ASCE tracks the ASCE training, courses, and certificates via "myCourses" and also allows one to input other training and upload certificates. You can print out a "transcript". I input and use NCEES to keep a log, store and send certificates given the various states acceptance of NCEES when audited. ...

RE: Ubiquitous Use of the Word "Engineer"

Posted By James Williams 06-28-2022 04:12 PM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
When asked ... When I was in college, I became and introduced myself as a "Civil Engineering Student". When employed as a cooperative education student, I introduced myself as a "Civil Engineering Co-op". When I passed the E.I.T. exam aka FE exam, I added E.I.T to the end of my name when writing, ...

RE: Ubiquitous Use of the Word "Engineer"

Posted By James Williams 06-23-2022 04:23 PM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
Nancy, thank you, thank you, and thank you. You can work with me anytime and anywhere. I love the breakdown. The definition is often linked to or based on the "education" along with the when, where and how received. The more I think about it, the more I question my own thinking. Is an engineering education ...

RE: Lifelong Learning as Engineers

Posted By James Williams 06-23-2022 04:23 PM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
The need to love what you do when you have to spend eight (8) or more hours a day doing for decades is the message I passed to family and friends. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to invest any more than the mandatory time in something they are simply okay or like doing. I am curious as to whether one ...

RE: Ubiquitous Use of the Word "Engineer"

Posted By James Williams 06-21-2022 08:57 AM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
As I was unpacking the truck in Washington, DC this past week, an employee of the hotel introduced himself as the engineer with the hotel. He went on to explain that he had not graduated from college but was the head engineer there. His father, like my own, had taught him to work with drywall, electrical, ...

RE: Refusing to Sign PE Hours

Posted By James Williams 06-21-2022 08:57 AM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
Typically, the sign off is for the individual that has some direct knowledge of the hours in question. There are some challenges that can arise when the individual for which you did all the work is no longer employed by the company. As a licensed engineer, I have recently been in the position of having ...

RE: Beyond Work in the Workplace

Posted By James Williams 05-27-2022 12:17 AM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
Great way to bond with co-workers and meet folks from other departments that you not normally meet on a day-to-day. My previous company was so large they had golf and tennis leagues. In the golf league, we competed against teams from construction, welding, planning and a variety of departments. Interestingly ...

RE: Why Don't You Respond? (Building Online Confidence)

Posted By James Williams 05-17-2022 04:01 PM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
Until an option to reply anonymously is added, the logic of providing current job, career and experience related insight will remain a challenge. There are challenges with the typed word being taken out of context, especially when one fails to re-read and forgets a word; editing becomes more "work ...

RE: Eureka! Moments Don't always happen 9-5

Posted By James Williams 04-21-2022 11:34 AM
Found In Egroup: Career By Design \ view thread
There are a variety of "proper" ways to encourage creativity/innovation when educating senior students at a university. At our school students in our senior years had to produce senior projects (unique and specialized reports) similar to a master's thesis. I am a big proponent of encouraging cre ...