Celebrating National Engineers Week
This week engineers will be celebrated nationally as part of National Engineers Week! This year’s theme, Creating the Future, is dedicated to captivating and inspiring children and young adults to a future career in engineering. This week, our goal is to spark a new interest by speaking about engineering, doing STEM activities, and sharing our stories.
Inspiring the future engineers of tomorrow is no small feat, so we have asked our diverse team of engineers what they believe makes a successful engineer. From those who are veterans of the field to those who are just starting out, our team gave a variety of thoughtful and inspiring answers, as seen below.
“An engineer is successful if they are good at problem-solving. One of my favorite things about my job is figuring out how to make the engineering work for a client’s or architect’s vision on a project.”
-Rachel Smith, PE, LEED AP, CFM, Senior Project Manager
“A successful engineer is responsive. Clients need to know that their project is a priority. A successful engineer is goal-oriented. Clients want solutions that fit their budget and timeline.”
– Emil Bunek, PE, Project Coordinator
“To be a successful engineer, you have to look at challenges as an opportunity to learn something new (and enjoy learning new things), as well as be humble enough to ask questions and seek out advice.” – Jill Rickard, PE, Project Engineer
“Being a successful engineer is not knowing all of the answers but, rather, knowing who to ask when you don’t know the answer.” – Robert S. Rochon, PE, Senior Project Manager
“Conscientiousness and attention to detail are critical.” – Becky Klein, PE, LEED AP BD+C, Project Manager
“A successful engineer is resourceful and efficient to come up with the best solution to a problem while keeping project timelines on track.” – Lucas Driesenga, PE, Project Engineer
“Effective engineers know the importance of critical thinking and are not afraid to ask questions. Taking information learned through that process and mindfully implementing it is a continued path of success.” – Wendy Ripper, PE, Project Engineer
“Attention to detail – taking the time to ensure documents are checked and accurate saves time and resources. Communication skills – all projects fail if communication is poor.” – Leslie Accardo, PMP, LEED AP, Senior Project Manager
“Being a successful engineer requires constant collaboration and continuous learning. Every engineer will approach the same problem differently, so being able to pick up skills from other talented engineers and work seamlessly together is vital to becoming a successful engineer of your own. You can learn something from anyone!” – Kelly Duerr, Senior Staff Engineer
“Knowing which numbers are crucial and which numbers require less attention in a design helps in efficiency and accuracy.” – John Stebelton, Project Engineer