Learning, leadership, and lifecycles

If there was a schematic diagram on ‘how to build an excellent engineer’, leadership would be the equivalent of the controls system that optimises everything. But not leadership in the conventional management structure sense, I’m referring to the kind of internal settings that encourage us to take ownership of our own work and a true sense of purpose.

These ‘soft skills’ are key traits in growing our proficiency and capabilities as an engineer. Excellence in technical skills (in my experience) is just the start of the journey.

Developing soft skills means thinking beyond one’s own core discipline. Even as a graduate, we should be looking outside our work to see if there is anything else happening in the wider team or on projects that we can help deliver. Even a newly-employed graduate engineer can achieve this. In this scenario, both the individual and the team benefit as a result.

Cultivating the leadership mindset also means continuous learning. When I first joined Cundall as an early career engineer, the senior staff recognised my ability to manage small projects because I would venture outside my own work and discipline to see where else I could help.

They gave me the opportunity to develop those project management skills through managing small projects including services for luxury retail outlets at Sydney Airport. This meant needing to be across all the other services and their designs and delivery to ensure the result would meet the very exacting requirements of the client and the retailer stakeholders.

As well the details of as my own mechanical system design contribution – such as sizing the appropriate HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system and placement of air diffusers – I needed to coordinate multidisciplinary design including the placement of fire safety sprinklers and the electrical, security and lighting designs. The goal was to ensure we were giving the client one single package that addressed all the performance and aesthetic criteria.

Over recent years, I have had the opportunity to grow in my role through gaining experience in a diversity of sectors and now lead multidisciplinary teams.

It is not only engineering expertise per se that we develop through cross-disciplinary learning. All our engineering teams in Cundall work closely and in collaboration with the sustainability and ESG team. As a result, we are absorbing and cross-pollinating knowledge so for every design and project plan we are always considering how we can provide a sustainable solution for the client.

We are continuously reviewing our projects holistically and identifying what we learned, and how that knowledge can be applied in the next endeavour.

Our advanced in-house digital modelling capabilities enable us to test ideas and challenge assumptions. We can examine multiple factors that shape asset performance such as local weather conditions, climate change impacts, the impact of adjacent buildings on thermal performance and daylighting, and the outcome of proposed materiality and spatial planning decisions. Being able to cost-effectively examine multiple options using evidence-based digital tools means we can have confidence in proposing something unique that is more sustainable.

We invest this kind of additional time separately to a project’s contracted hours and fees because we know that when we do something new that generates a better result. We then share knowledge internally and deploy those ideas or concepts to future projects. That continual inventiveness of course has a flow-on effect of taking us one step further towards net zero – the ultimate reward of leadership both at the individual and the company levels.

Our leadership learning also comes from the way Cundall’s senior engineers give early career staff ownership of their work and the opportunity to see it through. Our junior engineers are not just completing calculations or design drawings and then moving on to the next project and doing those same, isolated tasks all over again. – Our people are involved in every stage of the entire project lifecycle. This includes going onto site before we design and do preliminary sketches, so we understand the site constraints. Then once works commence, we return on-site to see how works are being delivered, and then we participate in the commissioning, handover and post-completion measurement and verification.

Even the operational and maintenance phase becomes part of our intellectual remit, as we speak with stakeholders including the facilities management team. So, by seeing the entire asset and project life cycle up close, we understand how an asset will work, and have deeper insight into what would make it work more efficiently.

That is a wealth of knowledge we can apply to the next opportunity.

For a young engineer there is a meaningful sense of ownership and purpose in this approach. The process of having our work reviewed also means we are continually improving our practice and our ability to be a leader in our own work. These are the hallmarks of true engineering leadership.