I’m no stranger to having an e-mail ignored (you know the rules…). It seems a fact of modern life that some people get more mail than they have time to answer. I’ve been forced to give up on guest posters, drop efforts to engage the institutions with some of my other initiatives, and even spend six months of my life chasing people to pay them money.

There’s the assumption that because I’m a native speaker, write a blog in my spare time and went to university that I’m some how the best communicator known to mankind. Whilst we all know this to be the case; I recently decided to humour the internet and seek advice on how to lower the percentage of e-mails I lovingly craft and then send out to die alone and unread in an unforgiving world of IMAP data storage.

Annoyingly much of the advice available online is aimed at plucky start-up entrepreneurs attempting to engage the President of the United States via the medium of unsolicited e-mails. For those of us who aren’t struggling to get support for the next FriendFace, however; I have developed the following system as a more proactive alternative to throwing bricks through windows.

An Example

To: [email protected]

Re: Be My Friend

Marshall,

Please can you be my friend?

I think we’d get on really well; I’m your biggest fan and I missed the chance to meet you outside your last concert. Me and my girlfriend have a child on the way, and I’m finding it a real pressure- being able to talk it through with someone who has so much in common with me would be really helpful. It would be great if you could come over for some tea- I only drink it stone cold.

Will you be my friend? I need to know before I go for a drive on Sunday.

Thanks for your help,

Stan (+1-202-555-0105)

[Ed. Just in case you’re not as cool as me- this is a pop culture reference.]

What To Write

So for those of you who want to know the secrets behind my ad hoc method; here comes the science bit…

To: [Only the person who ignores your e-mails], Subject: [What you want in three words]

The first view of an e-mail is its subject; and at a glance you can take-in about three words. This means that if the recipient is prioritising, they’ll be able to see (basically) what you want. Similarly I’ve found that a lot of people practice the SEP approach to e-mail response, so unless the e-mail is to them and only them, they’ll ignore it.

Name of person who ignores your e-mails,

Start with their name- which makes it clear that this is a request from someone who actually knows them, and gets you pass the Nigerian scam filter.

Short sentence saying what you want

In a space heavy sentence, say what you want. The theory goes that this is the point the eye is immediately drawn to (most people know that e-mails start with a name, so they skip it). By separating it out, our busy recipient can immediately find out what you want. It also suggests that, because you’ve got it down to a sentence, it is a small and easy request.

Say it again, but as a three or four line paragraph explaining any more details; don’t worry too much- this paragraph will be ignored

The next paragraph just gives you a chance to explain- keep it short (see above), as it might not be read if you’ve managed to get your opening sentence right. For more complicated requests though, chances are this will be picked up by the person who actually gets lumbered with solving your problem.

Say what you want again, in a slightly differently worded sentence that preferably includes a time frame

Finally, following the age old PowerPoint adage- tell them what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell them what you said. Recapitulate by repeating your request, adding any details of time frames.

Your name and contact details; just in case this actually works.

Always end with your name, e-mail (even though it can be replied to…) and phone number to make it as easy as possible to get a response.

There are people that just don’t answer e-mails- it’s weird, but there you go; for my first few years of university I was under the impression that my personal tutor was a made-up entity for tax purposes. Try not to over do it, but a call is probably still the most efficient way to get what you want.

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A weekend wrestling with Christmas Trees and discovering the ‘decorations-tax’ you encounter when you take the bold leap from a 4’ to a 6’ tree has finally put me in a seasonal mood. Before the feeling of good will to all men (and women, of course) engulfs us, however, I thought it now would be a good time to share these three words that engineers only say when they want to annoy each-other.

Obvious

As in: “and it’s obvious”

People who work in technical fields should be banned from calling anything obvious. If it took you five years and a masters degree to understand it, it’s not obvious. Moreover, if you have to tell someone something is obvious, it probably isn’t. In Civil Engineering where everyone is a ‘jack of all trades and master of none’ with differing experiences and specialisms the word just becomes the verbal equivalent of peacocking.

Difficult

As in: “it can’t be that difficult…”

This is an odd one. Despite the fact that engineers are always moaning that no-one understands them, it seems to be remarkably common that they’ve paradoxically not tried to understand each other. The number of times I’ve seen someone dismiss the complexities of another discipline simply because it appears simple to them is just depressing- and a habit I suspect that will come back to bite us when the “it can’t be that difficult to make all BIM files the same format” assumption turns out to be false.

Just

As in: “if you could just…”

Few words get me more worried than “just”. If someone asks you to “just” do something, you can guarantee it’ll take five weeks and require a redesign of the whole structure. If someone refers to a detail with the prefix “just”, without a doubt it’ll turn out to be the most complex aspect of the whole building- becoming more exception than rule. If a programme timescale includes the term “just”, well- you might as well treble it right then and there. The worse part, however, is that whoever issued the instruction of ‘just’ will continue to think of it as a ‘just’ and become progressively more annoyed as you fail to deliver; even though it wasn’t you who said it would ‘just’ take a few hours to ‘just’ design the foundations.

Honestly, it can’t be that difficult not to use these words; I mean it’s obvious really- we just need too remove them from the English language.

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So it seems that all the ‘influencers’ on LinkedIn earn livings by stating the obvious to each other. Jealous of this trend, I’ve put together 7 awesome habits that, by following, will make you into the most dynamic engineering project manager outside of this box!

1. Meet, and Meet Again

There’s no I in team, but there is a me[a/e]t! Touching base (for at least seven hours a day) lets you put out fires before they even start. Empowering your team through high-level collaboration will make sure they’re all singing from the same songsheet, and gives you plenty of facetime for blamestorming any project delays resulting from continuous meetings.

2. Save Time, Cut The Programme

When 110% isn’t enough, a real project manager isn’t afraid to actualise the big picture. Take an ideas shower and right-size (assign half the time quoted) the programme; suddenly that project has taken the late-to-early paradigm shift; and you’re the hero!

3. Know Everything, Even When Know You Nothing

A great project manager is a thought-leader and knows all the issues before  they’ve even entered the loop.  At the end of the day, the key to dynamic collaboration is continuous, unrelenting, proactive initiatives. The best project managers know exactly when to admit their ignorance: never. Yes, you may have employed an engineering firm to design for you, but don’t let that stop you from ignoring them.

4. Dial ‘S’ For Speed

Time and time again I see young project managers who are just too afraid to leverage the power of “Phone 2.0”. When a task has become mission-critical you need complete transparency, and the only way to get team-investment is to call every five minutes to find out if it’s still on the radar.

5. Talk, Without Listening

In any project there will always be stakeholders; all of which will believe their issues to be the most important. To really inspire as a project manager you’ve got to follow that golden thread of connectivity, respond to these challenges and repurpose them into your own win-win outcome- regardless of what anyone else says.

6. Paperwork Is Progress

Let me tell you a story from a friend of mine; Clara. She’d been parachuted in to find a path forward and pull the trigger on a failing project. A quick sense check transferred the knowledge she needed to transition these problems into opportunities. Using measurement-focused platforms and document socialising she was able to establish key performance indicators and fully metric the increasing delays the new paperwork was causing.

7. The Last Minute Is The Best Minute

The best project managers don’t move goal posts- they reinvent them! If you’ve got a wish-list you need to throw each and every opportunity at the wall to see what sticks; and how can you do that before the wall’s built?! By synergizing your projects with last minute change management and scope-bandwidth expanding alterations you’ll be sure to get the best out of your designer.

Disclaimer: If you follow these habits and get fired, it’s not my fault- you simply didn’t have an action plan born from blue-sky thinking…

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According to Google, the majority of people coming to my blog are looking for an answer to the age old question: “What do Civil Engineers actually do?”. Bewilderingly this isn’t something I’ve actually written about, until now…

I could toe the party line; but frankly it’s amazing how so many dynamic words can say so little. Instead I’ve taken to my timesheet to find out what I have literally been doing these past few months. Before I continue, however, it’s worth pointing out that I’m a graduate engineering consultant working at a medium sized company. I’ll go into how all three of those words make a difference to the answer at the end.

A chart showing what civil engineers do

Design Things – 31%

A not unexpected top result, given that it’s my job to design things. A further breakdown, however, shows that only a third of my time is spent doing ‘structural’ design. Perhaps surprisingly, finding out what you need to keep something from falling down is the easy bit; the devil is very much in the detail. In my experience a ‘detail’ is problem initially introduced with the prefix just (such as “those beams will all just meet in the middle,” or “we’ll just use a robust kerb and it’ll be fine,”) and ends up taking three days to solve.

Write Things – 19%

It’s startling how many documents engineers have to write. Anyone who tells you it’s all maths and physics is simply lying. From short explanations of how you’re going to design something, to colossal 90 page justifications of geotechnical parameters, it all adds up. For most designs the calculation page count pales in comparison to the associated documentation- especially with public sector clients; if I confess to having written a 15 page instruction manual for a pond, it wouldn’t be the worst of it.

Model Things – 14%

Separate from designing is modelling. In an ideal world every structure would be built, tested for 120 years, knocked down and then re-built and commissioned. Few clients, however, are willing to accept an 120 year lead time, and therefore structures have to be designed on paper. Creating and manipulating representative mathematical models and justifying and accounting for the assumptions made in their development is probably one of the best bits of engineering- although that might just be me!

Draw Things – 13%

The principal currency of information between engineers is the Drawing. Although it’s the eventual job of a draughtsman to craft my grubby hand-drawings into works of technical merit, creating these sketches is a no mean feat. Between conceptual sketches for clients and contractors, providing all the mark-ups and notes to create a drawing you can build from, and chipping in when deadlines are uncomfortably close- having someone else to draw for you isn’t as much of as an advantage as it first appears.

Discuss Things – 11%

Engineering is a surprisingly social profession. Long has the lesson been learned that getting together to discuss a design with everyone involved will save a lot of time in the long run. Consequently I spend a lot of my life in meetings arguing about details and trying to reveal the secret desires of clients before, rather than after, we’ve drawn everything up. And then, of course, there’s the contractors on site, who apparently consider a day wasted if they don’t call up at least sixty (or so) times.

Visit Things – 6%

Designing blind is a dangerous task, and despite being principally office based I still get out on site two or three times a month. Most of the time this is just to help investigate, inspect and identify potential issues. For complex (and seemingly all night-) works, however, contractors often like to have the designer at hand so that they can be pointed at if it all goes wrong- and then left to find a fix.

Learn Things – 5%

I once heard someone describe Civil Engineers as ‘jacks of all trades, masters of none,’ and its true. Civil engineers work with so many different materials, in so many areas, facing infinitely varied conditions; everything a unique problem- that you barely get time to get your head around one thing before you are onto another. As such, some of my time is still spent simply learning new things and researching options.

The Three Magic Words

As a graduate I take on most of the ‘grunt work’ of the design, however as I head higher up the tree this will start to tend towards management and conceptual elements. Perhaps most dividing is the type of engineer you ask, where consultants primarily design, and contractors primarily get things built; the contrast on how each spend their days will be significant (with contractors spending much more time on site). Finally the bigger the firm the more likely you are to develop a more focused set of activities, for example many large companies have modelling technicians.

So next time you wonder what Civil Engineers actually do, be prepared for an 839 word answer!

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