I struggled when I began my career as a water resource engineer.
I didn’t have any internships in college (at least not in civil engineering). I also knew nothing about the industry. Over time, and with tons of effort, I learned the necessary skills and felt caught up after my slow start.
Here are the 3 primary steps (I believe) you should take as a young water resource engineer.
The ones I would take if I had to start over.
Step 1: You need to realize there isn’t one right answer
School doesn’t prepare you for the complexity of the real world.
There isn’t one answer to be found by laboring over the problem for hours on end. Entry level engineers can waste a lot of time with this mindset.
Most times, there are more than one solution to a problem. Deciding which solution to use comes down to tradeoffs. Tradeoffs that you might not know about because you don’t have the experience to be able to see them.
Engineering in the real world is like being a detective. You dig up all the information about the problem you are trying to solve, then you make an imperfect decision.
Because here’s the thing…
You’ll never have every possible piece of information before you make the decision.
It’s not black and white, it’s all gray. Get used to swimming in it.
Step 2: You need to frequently communicate and check-in with senior engineers
As an entry-level engineer, you will have zero autonomy.
Your only job is to make your manager’s job easier. They need to be comfortable that you can learn how he/she likes to do things and do it efficiently. The only way to do that at the beginning is to have a lot of check-ins.
Give them updates on what you’re finding and the problems you’ve run into.
The worst thing you can do is spend a bunch of time (and budget!) working solo on a task, only to hand it back to your manager and find out you aren’t moving in the right direction or you didn’t understand what you needed to do in the first place.
That is a waste of everyone’s time.
Communicate and check-in and you will make everyone’s lives easier. I can guarantee you'll also earn your fair share of brownie points along the way.
Step 3: You need to focus on becoming proficient with one software package
There won’t be many areas at the beginning of your career where you can become an expert, but software is one of them.
It will take a few years, at least, to build an understanding around how your job works and what skills are most important. You can stand out by becoming an expert in how the software that you are using functions, its available tools, all that good stuff.
Oh, and Microsoft products don’t count.
We’re talking about technical software. Infoworks ICM, PCSWMM, HEC-RAS, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Revit. Things like that.
In the first few years of my career, when I had downtime, I would read the user’s manual for Infoworks ICM. Mostly because I had an interest, but I also figured it would come in handy.
Sooner or later it was obvious to other people that I knew my way around the software. I'd learned about tools they didn’t know existed.
It didn’t take long for a more senior engineer to start calling me. He would ask me how to perform certain functions within the software and if I had time to help him with his tasks.
It made me look like an expert in something before I knew what it meant to be a water resource engineer.
Become an expert in software and you’ll stand out a lot quicker.
And those are my tips!
Let me know if you got any value from this or if you would add anything if you were writing it.