15 Engineering Musts

In the summer of 2017, I started at my internship at Intralox, LLC in New Orleans, LA. There, I met some amazing people and learned so many valuable lessons. One of those lessons was to adopt good engineering practices. Towards the midpoint of my internship, I created a list that I pinned up in my cubicle. In no particular order, it was a list of things that I thought could serve as a guideline for some basic, but important, engineering practices.

An Engineer Must...

1. Self-Manage. A valuable employee is one that drives themselves to be the best at all times. This involves staying organized and on-task. The managers that don't have to micro-manage become more efficient at their own tasks, and the chain continues moving upward, resulting in a highly efficient company.
2. Set Goals & Deadlines. No project is complete without setting goals, which must be delivered in a timely manner. Stretch goals allow you to continual better yourself by pushing you to improve, while showing that your work is valuable. Deadlines are necessary for any project with a timeline, and it is important to stick to deadlines in order for the project to finish smoothly. Overdue tasks build up, and so will the stress.
3. Test & Validate. It's great to be able to perform calculations to show that your design will work. But will it work in reality? It's absolutely necessary to create physical models to not only to see if the design works, but to collect data to prove that the design in reality functions that same as the design in theory. This is truly an engineering must.
4. Think about Weight. Is it critical that my design is lightweight? If so, where should weight be reduced? Is it still strong enough to avoid yielding? What about stress concentrations? Can I reduce friction? Will I lose rotational inertia? These are some things that any engineer must analyze critically about their design.
5. Think about Costs. How much is my stock material? Does aluminum or steel better apply to my design? What's my manufacturing costs? Costs comes in many different shapes and sizes, but all forms must be considered, especially when the money is coming out of the company. Ensure that your design's cost is suitable for the application and satisfactory with management and the client.
6. Consider Manufacturing. Manufacturing costs is heavily determined by the method and the precision, which are typically related. Prototyping may be a necessary preliminary step. Some forms of manufacturing involve trade-offs, such as injection molding, which has a high upfront cost of tooling molds but millions of products can then be produced.
7. Deliver Results. Engineering is all about problem solving, which requires delivering results. Whether it's for a customer or your boss, they want to see results come forth after their time investment, relying on you to complete your work with something to show.
8. Mitigate Risks. Risks can stem from possible design issues. Safety factors for designs can increase the chances of a design functioning longer and better. Being knowledgeable in the basics of engineering can allow engineers to make choices that can prevent failure in designs.
9. Document, Document, Document. Nothing is more valuable than knowledge transfer, especially when it comes to a group with members that come and go. Easing the learning curve for somebody can make a great difference in the time that it takes to start working efficiently. Recording test data and reporting what worked or didn't work are other ways that documentation can be effective.
10. Use Credible Sources. When it comes to constants for design calculations or researching a certain topic, it is always important to refer to a legitimate and well-published source. The safest bet is on textbook references, which is why I recommend saving those textbooks from your engineering courses. (Hint: If you plan on taking the PE exam, I hope you become familiar with your text references)
11. Listen to All Options. Sometimes it's easy to think your solution is the best solution. When working with a team, it's always important to brainstorm with your team and listen to all input. This encourages teamwork and also opens your mind to different ways of thinking, making it a learning experience as well.
12. Communicate Effectively. Communication is an often overlooked skill among engineers. Managers look for people with the personality and character that can easily integrate into their team. Knowing how to speak to a business audience (e.g. investors or customers) is important, since it's harder to convey engineering ideas in layman's terms.
13. Learn from Mistakes. A general life lesson can be applied to engineering work, where mistakes can provide an opportunity for learning. A good engineer will document the mistake, so that the same mistake won't be repeated by anybody in the future.
14. Be Confident. As an engineer, you should be confident in your work. Confidence comes from thorough research and a solid design. If you can reason your design choices, then confidence will follow, which is a strong trait when presenting your designs to your managers or peers.
15. Continually Improve. Finally, continual improvement is what this whole list is centered around. Engineers that change the world do so by continuously improving themselves to exceed past accomplishments or to attain new ones. This is the true goal of every engineer. This path of continual improvement may be different from person to person, but this should be mindset of anyone looking to move up in the world.

This list came from what I learned during my internship, as well as my involvement with Formula SAE. I have used this list to remind myself to apply what I think to be good engineering practices, such that over time this list becomes habit. Each practice may apply to different people in different way. However, I encourage others to do something similar, no matter for what industry.

There are many more things here that can be added to the list that I might not have included. If you feel like there's more that can be added to this list, feel free to share!