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  • 1.  Global Practice Guide

    Posted 09-10-2019 06:16 PM
    Edited by Tirza Austin 09-10-2019 06:16 PM
      |   view attached

    Culture, design and construction, and legal and financial issues are all important elements to consider if you are considering global practice.

    Global Practices Guide is developed by and for the structural engineering community. It highlights those areas requisite for global practice that are beyond the structural engineer’s domestic field of training—including culture, design and construction, and legal and financial issues.

    I would like to start a discussion around these concerns. What specific issues have you encountered in global practice?  

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    Angela Fante P.E., M.ASCE
    Philadelphia PA
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    Attachment(s)

    pdf
    Global Practice Guide1.pdf   2.39 MB 1 version


  • 2.  RE: Global Practice Guide

    Posted 11-29-2019 09:02 AM

    Thank you, Angela, for the GPG and questions raised.

     To be clear, it was my professional engineering management experience, and remains my opinion that what the GPG notes as requisite and beyond the structural engineers domestic field of training holds true at least 70% of the time for our civil engineering firms nationally. Perhaps the most formally recognized both educationally as well as within professional practice that has the most impact on success within engineering firms is culture.

    I am delighted to note that your SEI Global Activities Division placed "Culture" first!

    Culture p. 4. to 6.

    The points raised are, of course, right-on. However, one could simply remove the references to global and international business and it would apply directly to what our engineers face EVERY DAY in our national practices. For example, simply using the word "Team" for a group of professionals assigned to work together is wrong until there is evidence there are team-behaviors routinely at work.

     OPINION

    Unless and until the civil engineering profession within academia is pressured into doing so, and the leadership of practicing civil engineers steps up to make that happen by showing up at civil engineering academic departments to support such a transition, our practicing engineers will continue to budget projects with 15 to 30% profit at proposal time, and once the project is closed, if they earn 3 to 5%, celebrate.

     Culture is the "Driver" that makes . . or doesn't. . . planned synergy occur across the other subjects within your guide.

     Cheers,

    Bill

     

     



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    William M. Hayden Jr., Ph.D., P.E., CMQ/OE, F.ASCE
    Buffalo, N.Y.

    "It is never too late to be what you might have been." -- George Eliot 1819 - 1880
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