Remember the classic McGraw Hill advertisement with a man sitting on a chair in an otherwise empty room, with this text, “I don’t know your company, your name or your product. Now what were you trying to sell me.” This represented traditional marketing through the channel of print advertising. Engineering firms have traditionally used print advertising, direct mail, and cold calling to build business.

Traditional branding is a top down approach with companies defining their brand. Today brands are being defined by conversations. Brands are defined by what people say about the firm. Is this how your firm is engaging clients?

If the brand for any civil engineering firm consists of a set of promises, isn’t it the company that decides the promises? Yes, core values of a firm are created internally, but the branding of the promise happens outside. In an environment where every firm offers “quality services, on time and under budget,” it is difficult to differentiate. Difficult unless you have built trust and relationships in the market place. Look at it this way: Traditional marketing was like taking a sledge hammer and hitting your prospects and clients over the head with it. It was almost like, “Believe me, or else.”

Branding today is like a magnet that draws clients to the company. This is the real value and purpose of social media in a business context.

Your firm might be filled with Gen Y employees who Twitter, blog and post on Facebook. This is not a fad, or something that young people do when they aren’t playing video games. Social media is the place where you cultivate your brand in the new economy.

In the traditional sales funnel you have the project universe at the top and as the funnel shrinks prospects are turned into clients. Today’s funnel has website visitors at the top who develop into leads and eventually clients. Before we go any further, it is important to point out that social media is not replacing the need for business development people or departments. Leads in the funnel don’t magically become clients because they heard about your blog or follow you on Twitter. But social media does act as trust agents. Unlike the businessman in the McGraw Hill advertisement, they trust what you are about to sell to them. Therefore the new tools of social media add power to traditional marketing.

Social media is where the conversation begins. When people are drawn to your firm, you are in a unique position to listen to their needs. This process enables your firm to build trust and create relationships before business development takes over the sales process.

For example, Linkedin is an excellent site to build your reputation as an industry expert. Expert status is a powerful way to differentiate a firm from the competition.

Differentiation isn’t easy because there isn’t a silver bullet in branding. Your competitors might also have expert status. Therefore, civil engineers must be intentional in embracing social media. The important part of cultivating the brand conversation is the transparency of your company. The end game of social networks is to drive people to your website. Therefore, your website has to be interactive instead of a yellow page ad. This means you need to have interesting content like a blog, videos, and articles. Marketing departments must be actively linking this information to their social networks. If you don’t have a blog, it is easy to start. Your marketing department is probably filled with ideas. For starters, why not interview clients for your blog? Another idea is to share lessons that you have learned. How about shooting videos at events? If you have a community outreach commitment, a video shot at an event could go viral after linking it to your social networks. Helping others in the new economy is good for business. It goes back to the concept of trust.

Finally, the most important thing about your transparency is the requirement to allow every staff person to participate. It makes sense based on pure numbers and possible connections, but it also makes sense in building trust and growing relationships. When more people in the client universe understand your brand (your promises), there is greater potential for additional work. This is a reality that is not shaped by economic conditions, but by your flexibility and desire to embrace change.

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As I Googled “civil engineers license violation” I found myself at the California Board for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors. They state that while they have some criminal prosecutions…Citations are an alternative to criminal prosecutions which the Board can use to enforce the laws prohibiting unlicensed practice of engineering or land surveying. When a fine is levied with a citation, payment of the fine represents satisfactory resolution of the matter. The State’s criminal and citation listings have not been updated since 2007.

In 2003, NSPE approved their guidelines for NSPE State Chapters in addressing unlicensed practice of engineering. The report, now 6 years old, reported the finding that the most frequent violation cited by State Boards was that of unlicensed practice. Has this been updated? Are their new numbers tracking violations? I hope to have some answers in a future BLOG. In speaking with several officers of state chapters of NSPE, I found that policing has become increasingly difficult for the states. Self-policing by the state chapters, as opposed to relying on the individual state licensing boards is taking on a life of it’s own. Models for programs to give more support to State Licensing Boards are being developed.

With so many civil engineers still looking for work, some licensed and many not, I wonder if desperation will breed fraud? The majority of civil engineering firms now run their own employment background checks including license verification. But, what about the average individual consumer, looking to hire, for example, a structural engineer for inspection? How many check with the local licensing boards? One would hope everyone! Realistically…probably not that many.

What do you think and what do you know?

By Carol Metzner
President, The Metzner Group, LLC
Managing Partner, A/E/P Central, LLC home of CivilEngineeringCentral.com

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The Obama Administration recently laid out their plan for investment in a national network of High Speed Rail lines across the United States. This investment includes $8B to be generated from the $787B stimulus plan along with a proposed $5B coming from his proposed 2010 fiscal budget. On the grand scheme of things this is a drop in the bucket, and seemingly light years away from China’s initiative, but I guess you need to start somewhere, right?

According to a recent article in the China Daily, China is “poised to become the world’s High Speed Rail leader.” They are set to build 42 new high speed lines spanning a total of 13,000 km over the next three years. And while our current administration is contemplating how to spend $13B in high speed rail, China is investing $300B in their high speed rail initiative by the year 2020. If a country as smart and as talented as China is blazing this trail, shouldn’t we be more aggressively following their lead?

The way I see it, the positive impacts of building out High Speed Rail lines are good & plenty, here are just a few:

• A reduction in highway traffic
• A decreased dependency on oil
• Minimized pollution
• Increased employment options for commuters who would not normally drive to certain locations
• Newly created jobs for planning, design and construction professionals, among MANY others
• A reduction of air traffic
• Increased property value for those outlying areas that would otherwise have limited options in getting to “the city.”

And these are just a few. I recently listened to a debate on the High Speed Rail topic between Richard Harnish, Executive Director-Midwest High Speed Rail Association and Randall O’Toole, Sr. Fellow with the CATO Institute. Grab a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun…or two…and take a listen:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/09/03/midmorning1/

The information available on this topic is endless. I believe High Speed Rail to be a great and necessary alternative, but like everything else, it boils down to money and acceptance. The proposed $13B investment is a nice start, but where will we get the funds to finish? And once these High Speed Rail lines are up and running, will there be enough funds from rider revenue, taxes, and government subsidies to keep up with the cost of operations and maintenance?

I believe that one day High Speed Rail will be a mainstay in our country, it’s just a matter of when. What do you think?

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Darron Pustam

Twenty years of my life have been spent in the company of surveyors, engineers, geographic information systems professionals, and cad-designers. I have always had a great admiration and respect for these disciplines. The calculations, maps, instruments, the whole nine yards.  Knowledge of the inner workings of these systems coupled with business-information technology expertise; shed insight into of how companies in these industries could be better served by efficiently structuring, integrating, and routing the data embedded within technical and business software systems and incorporating them into their underlying business processes.

Surveying and mapping disciplines as well as that of engineering require technical software application tools which all serve to greatly enhance the professions. These programs simultaneously exist in one form or another. With so many software solutions, it is easy to lose sight of your data through the numerous interfaces and formats that currently exist. Even more worrisome is the lack of data integration and duplication perpetrated by disjointed systems.

When CAD software emerged, the first version would probably have been installed by a resident engineer or drafts person \ mapper. In other words, the person technically trained in the discipline – not necessarily IT. Back in the day the IT function for small businesses was assigned to the employee with the least aversion to a keyboard. Imagine installation carried out solely by technical users only trained in a particular software application but who also doubled as your IT resource.

Software installations would have probably proceeded without concern for how they would affect or integrate with the multitude of other processes making up the entire business system. Lethal combination of technical power user and latest software caused a blurring in functionalities, severely restricting computing operandi and allowing power users to essentially pave an electronic cow path. This also resulted in widening the gaps between legacy and newly minted systems.

In other words, lack of integration of data from the different software applications and disciplines caused double work and misdirection of data. Engineers, designers, technicians, administrative staff, and managers were all simultaneously creating information and being paid twice, maybe more for work that could have been already created or incorrectly routed.

Engineering software applications are designed to support compatibility and database connectivity. The actual usages of these advanced functionalities however, were not the domain of the technical power user base. Over time power users have evolved as a result of their discipline and software moving to the next technological level. Since the average IT resource may not be familiar with engineering per say; installation and usage was left up to the technical power user to direct.  In this case these applications where possibly installed without consideration for the rest of the applications or processes already running within the company.  At that time, the IT resource that installed the software, may have never knew the full capabilities for instance, of CAD or GIS systems; since these were the realm of the power user.  Thus, IT could not truly harness its potential by aligning them with business systems. In each department everyone was getting the job done and some becoming proprietary software experts along the way. These software implementations though advancing in functionality ineffectively expensed the organization’s data structure. We might say that software went in one direction and business processes went in the other.

Eliminating wasted efforts, increasing efficiency, and reducing cost are currently the staples of this economic era. Using software applications, without an inkling of how it could be integrated into the macrocosm of the company’s business strategy, severely debilitates the performance of your systems and your ability to effectively deliver timely products and services. The leveraging of these systems as a whole for the benefit of the entire business is thus left to chance.

Believe it or not, software companies are partly to blame. They have tried their best to take the guess work out of installations, to facilitate user friendly and speedy startup applications.  Many companies that purchased AutoCAD and ArcGIS software have them installed by in house expertise such as their resident CAD \ GIS gurus. Many times have we heard managers saying that they have the latest software functionalities and the latest versions installed. Yet, projects are taking roughly same time to complete.  As your CAD guys continue to install version after version of AutoCAD, do you think the length of the project time will decrease as a result of software version enhancements?  We cannot keep doing things the same way and expect a different result.  CAD is continually integrating with geographic information systems and vice versa. The inherent spatial database structure and methodology of CAD files preparation needs a well thought-out approach such as that taken by the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). We need to think about how data can be used and where it can be recycled for use. Data integration is a mandatory part of the equation for any organization that intends to harmonize its business intelligence with operating as well as growth strategies.

Organizations need a multidisciplinary team comprised of power users, managers, and business analysts guided by a ‘Data Czar’ – someone with knowledge on effectively incorporating software systems with business processes. The team must be set up to look at the big picture and create a strategic data realization pathway. This team should have the authority to direct all information-based implementations.

The team should first, identify all business processes that contribute to the successful delivery of a company’s product or service. Next, take a surgical look at each, taking note of the information required and reviewing whether these processes are still valid.  The team must assign, automate, and streamline their systems to accept data from centralized sources and strategically integrate them to the relevant processes. Data capture must be moved as close as possible to the responsible party. Your goal is to create your core data one time and one time only. The data must reside in an accessible location. By accessible, the data must be easily disseminated to all the appropriate people and systems that require that specific information. We can all understand that duplication doubles employee time and also produces errors. What clearly resonates in the minds of the shareholder is that they are paying different employees to simultaneously perform the same job!

We are not limited to cost cutting initiatives by applying this methodology. No business can survive by only reducing cost. Having access to all the data sources in your company, gives you the ability to apply and re-apply intelligence into your business. Your data must become like ‘Lego’ building blocks, to fashion in any way you choose. When used successfully in accordance with the initiatives presented above, you have more options, more choices, and more avenues from which to analyze and identify new streams of revenue.

A clear business-information strategy is needed to mend these inefficiencies in our industry.  We need to take a visionary and multidisciplinary look at the inherent data structures within our companies. CAD, GIS and other applications are requiring the use of robust database management systems to manage its data. Focus must be placed on bridging these data dissemination gaps. We must engineer our business processes to be fully integrated, facilitating, reliable and efficient while simultaneously exploiting the capabilities provided by each software application in a way that will profitably maximize its use.

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THE GIST

1. All nominated logos (tag lines should be included if you have one) must be from civil engineering firms who operate within the United States.
2. If the logo has a story behind it, we would like to know about it.
3. Logo nominations can be submitted via:

EMAIL: info@CivilEngineeringCentral.com
DIRECT TWEET: http://twitter.com/civilengineers
LINKEDIN: By responding directly to our announcements you see on any LinkedIn groups

CRITERIA

Logo’s will be judged on a sliding scale based on the following criteria:

1. Does the logo make an immediate impact by grabbing one’s attention right off the bat?
2. Is the logo memorable? Is it uniquely applicable to what the firm does – enough so that it will positively embed itself in the memory of clients, employees, peers, etc?
3. Is the logo appealing to the eye?
4. Does the logo accurately represent the company and its services?
5. Does the nominated logo accurately represent the firm’s corporate and employment branding initiatives?

JUDGES

1. Ron Worth
   Chief Executive Officer
   Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS)
2. Lizz Pellet
   Chief Executive Officer
   EMERGE International
3. Matt Barcus
   Managing Partner, A/E/P Central, LLC home of CivilEngineeringCentral.com
4. Carol Metzner
   Managing Partner, A/E/P Central, LLC home of CivilEngineeringCentral.com

WINNER

Contest winner will be notified by CivilEngineeringCentral.com during the week of October 5th, 2009. Winner will receive:

1. Corporate logo prominently displayed on CivilEngineeringCentral.com‘s October 2009 e-Newsletter (12,000+ distribution).
2. One month as sponsor on our weekly LinkedIn Group e-update, “The LinkedIngineer.” This e-update goes out every Friday morning to all 2800 (and growing!) members of the Civil Engineering Central Group on LinkedIn.
3. 10 free job postings on CivilEngineeringCentral.com + Featured Employer upgrade.
4. Bragging rights until next year

DEADLINE

All entries must be received by September 30th, 2009

NOTE

Gist, Criteria, Judges, Prizes & Deadline are subject to change without notice as determined by A/E/P Central, LLC, home of CivilEngineeringCentral.com

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Remember when musings of the Internet was just a fad? Remember when the compass and slide rule were irreplaceable? Remember when the Post Office was relevant? Well, as it turns out, the Internet is here to stay; if you have a compass and slide rule you just might get your 15 minutes of fame on PBS’ Antiques Road Show; and I can’t recall the last time I paid bill or sent a hand written letter via snail mail. That said, consider yourself forewarned in regards to the utilization of Social Networking sites LinkedIn (44M+ users), Facebook (250M+users) and Twitter (4.5M+ users), among others – don’t be a naysayer, or you will be left in the dust. Chances are, if you are reading this, you are familiar with, and hopefully active on, one or more of these technologies. The key is – how can you make sure your company stays relevant by using them effectively?

10 WAYS SOCIAL NETWORKING CAN IMPACT YOUR BUSINESS & CAREER AS A CIVIL ENGINEERING PROFESSIONAL

1. Recruiting Professionals – Did you see the user statistics in the above paragraph? And those are only the three most popular sites among hundreds. And guess what? I suspect there are likely hundreds of thousands of members of the civil engineering community who utilize these tools and share information. They have put themselves “out there.” By joining these networks yourself and “working the network,” you will find many outstanding professional candidates, both passive and active. This topic of recruiting on social networks is quite a robust topic and information can easily be found online, in books or through various seminars. There are plenty of experts in this area so invest a little bit of time and money to catch you and your firm up to speed.
2. Industry News – Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin all have users and user groups who will be of interest to you. You will find that ENR, ASCE, Society of Hispanic Engineers, SMPS, etc all have active users and groups on these sites where news bites and press releases are shared regularly. Also, by connecting with other friends and colleagues within the industry you will often read status updates or tweets in regards to local infrastructure news.
3. Relationship Building – Learn what your colleagues, clients, and potential clients are doing; learn their interests; follow their tweets; make logical and profound comments in response to theirs. You can get a real sense of their personality, interests, etc that will certainly assist during face-to-face marketing efforts.
4. Marketing/Branding – Develop a Facebook Fan/Group page with blog entries, promotions, press releases, wins, job postings, awards, charity events, etc.; tweet these same items; develop a compelling corporate profile on LinkedIn and make sure your employees do as well.
5. Recruiting College Students – This is a “no brainer”. If you want to reach out to the next generation of civil engineers you need to have a strong corporate brand on Facebook and MySpace for sure. When visiting college campuses for recruiting trips have a couple laptops up and running at your table exhibiting these pages and invite them to join your pages or groups on line. Come prepared with business cards that provide the URL’s of your corporate social networking sites. College students want to work for firms that understand and are avid users of the web 2.0 technology that they utilize. 85% of college students are active on Facebook, 65% are active on MySpace. Again, a “no brainer.”
6. Recruiting Boomerangs – How often have you had employees of your firm fly the coup, only to return because the grass was not greener on the other side? By staying in touch with well respected ex-employees by inviting them to join a group where they will be exposed to all the great news that is occurring with your firm, you are giving yourself a nice advantage above other firms when the time comes that he or she begins to look for a new job. Firms like URS & Toll Brothers, among others, each have “Alumni” groups on Linkedin.
7. RFP’s – It’s only a matter of time before builders, agencies and architects will be tweeting RFP’s.
8. Professional Growth – By joining Facebook or LinkedIn groups, or by following specific associations or trainers or presenters on Twitter, you can remain well informed of all of the conferences, seminars, blogs, articles and publications being offered that you find relevant in your career.
9. Ignorance is Bliss – Do not fall into this trap. These networks are no longer the wave of the future, they are a mainstay. As a civil engineering professional, by not jumping on board you will become a relic – and this label is not something you or your firm will want to be labeled as as the demand for talent begins to hit the upswing.
10. As you can see, I intentionally left a blank space after #9 – what might you suggest to fill in that blank?

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I believe prudent leaders should prepare for inconsistent economic conditions for an extended period into the future. The keys to “weathering this storm” includes:

• Refining your strategy – ensuring you are focused on the right markets, clients and staying true to your business model and direction
• Having a client focus – taking care of your best clients
• Taking care of the business – managing efficient operations, while eliminating distractions or initiatives not proving out,  to maintain profits
• Managing the human equation – having the right people doing the right things and have a company-wide communication plan in action
• Keeping an eye to the future – taking steps to drive sustainable growth for the future

All of these are equally important during these times. This article focuses on one aspect of these focus areas, having a strong client focus to maintain and ideally grow “top-line” revenues. Maintaining the top-line revenue is critical because a services company is structured at every level to deliver a certain amount of revenue, based on the personnel it has. It is very difficult to reduce costs fast enough to counteract even a small drop in revenue. The important key to revenue growth revolves around having a strong external client focus and excelling in what you do as a company. The key elements to that client focus include:

• Superior communication
• Delivering the best
• Finding opportunities to expand the business

Poor communication is the biggest single complaint of clients. In all the surveys that are performed, the number one complaint from the feedback is that companies need to do a much better job with communication. In tough economic times, a business never wants to give its clients a reason to consider a change. Therefore, client communication is even more critical and excelling in your ability to communicate can actually give you a competitive advantage. Some simple tips to improve communication include:

• A weekly check-in with clients via phone. This provides an opportunity to see how things are going with their business, with them personally (including their family), to gain market intelligence and ask about future opportunities.
• Calling clients when you don’t win the contract. It is just as important to follow-up with a client when you don’t win the work as when you do. It is an opportunity to reinforce your interest in them as a client and find out how to improve relative to your scope, qualifications/capability or fees. It’s also a great opportunity to ask about other opportunities they or someone else in or out of their organization may have.
• Hand delivering your work product and proposals. Take the time to carefully review your project work, explain a report or set of plans, or review the proposal with them – in person. This technique can not only eliminate ambiguities, relay the progress, alert them to changes and educate your clients, but it can also demonstrate that you really do care and value the relationship by making the time for them. Finally, it’s a great opportunity to ask how else you might help them.
• Following up immediately after the work is complete. This ensures what you did met their expectations. It also is another one of those great opportunities to continue building the relationship and looking where other contract opportunities might be with them in the future.
• Giving brownbag presentations in the clients’ offices. Making presentations, in particular on a technology or service offering is a powerful way to get your staff in front of many of their key staff. These should not be marketing presentations, but rather teaching opportunities.
• Inviting clients to your in-house office meetings or to project sites. This has many benefits, including experiencing your firms’ culture, showing them what you are working on and are capable of doing, allowing them to meet key office/field staff and providing a learning opportunity.

Delivering high-quality work in an efficient, timely and profitable manner is essential to the continued health of any business. At the same time, having a helpful and solution oriented approach to the work goes hand and hand with doing the work. When working on contracts, a business should ensure that:

• The right personnel are working on an assignment. This begins by ensuring the project manager assigned to this contract has the communication, business and leadership skills to deliver the work. Also, that you have your best and most qualified staff assigned to the contract so they can deliver that work in an efficient and technically correct manner.
• Look for value-added solutions and innovate where possible. This is the best way to differentiate your firm. Challenging yourself to always be looking for value-added opportunities with a project can be not only a way to gain more preference with the client, but also an opportunity to derive more revenue for your firm.
• Exceeding the clients’ expectations. Meeting a clients’ expectation relative to schedule, budget and quality is not good enough. The best firms exceed their clients’ expectations so that you can’t give them a reason to consider someone else. Beating deadlines, staying at or under budgets and building excellent quality in your work product are imperatives in this economy.

Directing the resources, time, and the firm’s capital to look for new opportunities to drive revenue in the door is critical in these times.  Everyone in a company can have a part in this effort. In saying this, you cannot be successful by trying to be everywhere, doing everything and being everything to all clients. Staff within a professional services business need to:

• Pass along leads. Create an environment where you encourage all to pass along leads to those who have direct client contact. More importantly, maintain an internal communication system to pass key client and contract opportunity information throughout the firm.
• Look for cross-selling service opportunities. Whether you are organized by market sector, practice area/discipline, or geography, make sure you have a similar system in place to cross sell services. Ensure there are no artificial boundaries that will prohibit the ability to share information and ultimately talent in the firm.
• Focus on clients identified in the strategic or annual business plan. Whether by client type or by name, it’s important you stay true to your business model and strategic direction by focusing on those clients that have been determined as a fit for the firm. This may mean separating from or “firing” those that don’t fit.
• Specifically target clients. Make sure you have identified those clients who present opportunities in the near term and who are moving forward – so your business moves forward. Additionally, ensure the largest and best prospects are getting the highest priority.

So what can every employee that has customer contact do in a professional services company? Well, it’s pretty simple:

• Be in continuous conversation with your customers
• Deliver your best service, innovation and quality
• Look for ways to help your business grow revenues

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Immediately following the collapse, federal officials ordered an inspection of all steel deck truss bridges like the I-35W bridge.  Investigative reporter, Bill Dedman reported the following:
“At first, officials thought there were 756 steel deck truss bridges like the one that fell. That’s how many they found in the official federal database of bridges, the National Bridge Inventory, which gets its records from the states. Then state engineers found 32 more to add to the list. But when states started the inspections, they found that 280 of the bridges weren’t steel deck trusses at all — including 13 bridges made of wood timbers. Another 16 no longer existed; a bridge in Pennsylvania had been closed in 1982. Another 11 were private bridges, not subject to federal inspection. One in New Mexico was a pedestrian bridge. And a bridge in Pennsylvania had been double counted; federal officials had placed an identical ghost bridge in Maryland. By the time the survey was finished, the count of bridges of the same type as the Minneapolis span was down to 479, or 277 fewer than initially reported, according to internal e-mails from the Federal Highway Administration received Thursday by msnbc.com under the Freedom of Information Act.”

The Federal Highway Administration recommended framework for a bridge inspection QA/QC program is comprehensive.  In 2008, they cite six (6) state DOTs that have “existing QC/QA procedures that address specific aspects of the “Recommended Framework” in a manner the FHWA considers commendable.”  Six? Out of all of the DOTs in the US? I do realize that all states must have existing QC/QA procedures.  But only six are “commendable?” What is the status of the remaining state inspection programs? Adequate? Average? Acceptable?

We know that bridge construction has changed over the years.  Improvements in technology for use in bridge design, materials and construction have allowed engineers to project increased longevity of bridges. Structural engineers now describe bridge lifespan in terms of 100 years, instead of 20-50 years. Building new “improved” bridges, are we going to have 50 DOTs with commendable QA/QC inspection programs?

With the ability to build with an eye to sustainability, how do we fix what we have? Where does this leave us with our decaying bridges?  Many of those bridges now require billions of dollars for rehabilitation or replacement. How can we financially repair them if we don’t even have an accurate count of where they are and what type of bridge they are? What do you think?

By Carol Metzner
President, The Metzner Group, LLC
Managing Partner, A/E/P Central, LLC home of CivilEngineeringCentral.com

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Over the years I have often seen outstanding land development engineers desire to break into a new area of specialization under the civil engineering umbrella, yet they have found the opportunity to do so to be scarce, at best, purely because they have a background in land development. That said, after discussing this topic with numerous land development engineers across the country, I have been so inclined to blog…in defense of land development engineers.

Why do many firms who specialize in areas of water & wastewater, highway engineering, water resources, etc, turn a blind eye, when hiring, to candidates who come from a land development background? The usual response is that they do not have the desired technical experience, and would rather go without having to absorb the cost of training someone. As a recruiter, I completely understand that reasoning. There are some deeper stereotypes though that should be addressed here, so let’s do a little point/counterpoint as we evaluate some of these potential misconceptions…shall we?

POINT: Land Development Engineers are the “General Practitioners” of the civil engineering industry. They are jacks-of-all-trades-and-masters-of-none.

COUNTERPOINT: Land Development Engineers are indeed jacks of all trades, but they are often masters of those trades as well. When pulling together a land development project you are dealing with roadway, traffic, hydrology & hydraulics, utilities, etc. With a good 7-10 years of experience a talented engineer can fully master these concepts. This shows a high level of intelligence and a desire to learn.

POINT: If our highways and treatment plants and bridges were designed as poorly as some of the subdivisions then we would have an enormous problem.

COUNTERPOINT: Though you many not always like what you see, often times it is the land development engineer who is at the mercy of their client- the developer. Some developers have the goal of fitting as many lots as possible within a parcel of land for the least amount of money. This is unfortunate as many land development engineers are very creative. It’s not always about what it looks like, but rather the money – and at the mercy of the client their hands are often tied. Many firms would walk away from this type of client because they do not share the same philosophy…but many do not walk away.

POINT: Dealing with governmental clients is much more complicated than dealing with a developer.

COUNTERPOINT: Have you ever dealt with a developer? Enormous amounts of pressure, often times ridiculous deadlines with ridiculous expectations, and then there is the collections process. Also, land development engineers deal with MANY different personalities -not only their clients, but attorneys, municipal engineers and other governmental agencies, designers, surveyors, planners and landscape architects, builders, home buyers, angry citizens at public meetings, etc. I would tend to say, that more often than not, an experienced land development engineer could handle dealing with governmental engineers.

In the end, it may not be so much the technical skill set as it is the mentality. I believe that there are many talented land development engineers out there that could pick up pretty quickly on how to design a highway, a dam or a bridge with a little mentoring and some additional studying/training after hours. Land development engineers are used to spinning many plates at once in a fast paced environment, and are not often the analytical number crunchers that you so desire when designing a treatment plant.

So, when a sound land development engineering resume does surface, don’t be so quick to rule them out. What if they are indeed a number cruncher? Imagine a number cruncher than that has acquired great communication and team building skills as a result of being in a land development environment and what that could bring to the table for your firm’s bridge or water resources group. Would you be better off hiring this engineer and taking the time to catch him or her up to speed in a specific specialty rather than searching for the perfect candidate for two years with nothing to show?

During the current recession that we are entrenched in this may not be too much of an issue for you with the surplus of candidates “out on the street.” But during improved times and boom times, is this mentality really too “out of the box” for the civil engineering industry?

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In order to cast a wider net around the civil engineering community, CivilEngineeringCentral.com has fully integrated its brand to be fully compatible with the major Web 2.0 & social/business networking sites so you can stay up to date on all the latest “goings on” at CivilEngineeringCentral.com!

LINKEDIN:

CivilEngineeringCentral.com has established the Civil Engineering Central Group on Linkedin.  With nearly 2600 members to date, the goal of this group is to help members:

• Reach a wide array of members of the Civil Engineering community  (Civil & Structural Engineers, Civil Engineering Executives, Environmental Professionals, Construction Professionals, Land Surveyors, GIS Professionals, A/E Marketing Professionals, HR Professionals, Hiring Managers, Civil Engineering Students, Planners, Designers and all other members of the civil engineering community).
• To share ideas, ask questions, provide answers, share stories, to make connections and to learn the utilization of our Discussion Board & Blog.
• Know more than a name – view rich professional profiles from fellow Civil Engineering Central Group members.
• Read interesting articles written by your peers by signing up for the monthly e-newsletter.
• Unlike most other group discussion boards which contain mainly recruiters advertising open positions, we do not allow for it.  Our discussion board is used to discuss the relevant issues effecting your career, your work environment, technology, and any other civil engineering related issues that our members have a passion for.

Link To Join Our Linkedin Group:
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Our fan page feeds in our weekly blog and civil engineering job updates as new positions are posted on our site. Learn about, share and join the Civil Engineering Central group on Linkedin. And each month we will publish our e-newsletter article which is written by a member of the civil engineering community.

TWITTER:

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CivilEngineeringCentral.com the web’s premier niche job board and resume database catering exclusively to the civil engineering industry. CivilEngineeringCentral.com also hosts a weekly blog, publishes a monthly e-newsletters written by industry experts and provides an avenue for civil engineering professionals to pursue continuing education and professional development hours through their partnership with McKissock.

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Just a few years ago only a select few individuals had LEED AP following their name. Now more than 75,000 architects and engineers proudly display this designation to demonstrate their prowess in green building, strategies and technologies. The USGBC clearly states that the “LEED Professional Accreditation distinguishes building professionals with the knowledge and skills to successfully steward the LEED certification process.” As LEED certification becomes better defined, the LEED AP testing has become more difficult and comprehensive.

The LEED train has left the station and whether critics like it or not, it is here to stay. Therefore, having LEED AP on your resume will become a necessity and possibly valued in the future as the PE, AIA, RLA or AICP designations are now. Whether one can or has designed with an eye to sustainability in the past will no longer matter, without having the acronym after their name. Experts concur that, for now, LEED is here to stay and one might as well get on board.

Do understand that as the U.S. increases desirability and need for green design, skeptics are becoming louder and activists more outspoken. Pete Wann’s blog on the “Fashion of LEED Bashing” suggests that the original critics were builders and developers and that today’s naysayers are those from the environmental and architectural traditionalist movements. While an Internet search turned up plenty of arguments on both sides of the recycled fence, I still think that in spite of its flaws and inadequacies, the LEED program is better than nothing when it motivates people to seriously face the future environmental challenges. And if we are going to have universally accepted guidelines (I don’t see the USGBC going away) then why not have professionals accredited? What do you think?

By Carol Metzner
President, The Metzner Group, LLC
Managing Partner, A/E/P Central, LLC home of CivilEngineeringCentral.com

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As of March of 2008  civil engineering student enrollment was up across the states. With the failing US infrastructure, it appeared that students flocked to civil engineering undergraduate programs. One would think they would have been guaranteed a job. However, with our recession, civil engineering graduates report low employer turnout on college interviewing days. The overall job market is touted as the worst since the Great Depression. One student in the Civil Engineering Central group on LINKEDIN even offered to work for free!

Will incoming freshman students opt for other engineering discipline studies? Ten years from now will the civil engineering community find a gap in experienced engineers with 6-8 years of experience? I don’t think so.

Employers are slowly increasing their staffing outlook. Civil engineers are needed now more than ever. Transportation, water, environmental and federal programs continue to climb to the top of the contract ladder.

To quote from my favorite video from the UK Institute of Civil Engineers:

“Throughout history, it is civil engineers that have shaped and improved our lives and our environment.”

Creative, thoughtful students interested in “building a better world” will find a career awaiting them.

By Carol Metzner
President, The Metzner Group, LLC
Managing Partner, A/E/P Central, LLC home of CivilEngineeringCentral.com

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An ideal profession. There’s a lot packed into those words. And there are some aspects that we tend to forget as well. Seeing these kids being inducted reminded me of a few things I believe are worth sharing.

We’re all familiar with the traditional definition of engineers and engineering. We gravitate pretty quickly to the mathematics, science and technology aspects of what it means to engineer. But I’ve always been intrigued by lesser known and seldom used definitions.

Think about these statements a bit:

Engineer: A skillful contriver or originator of something.

Engineering: The action of working artfully to bring something about.

Those words “contriver,” “originator,” “artfully,” and “something” create an abundance of energy and excitement in me. Why? Because they demonstrate that engineering and engineers are about more than math. More than science. Engineering does not end with a set of plans. Engineers are not just problem solvers. Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with being a great problem solver. But engineers should be encouraged to wrap themselves in a broader – and brighter – cloak.

Engineers dream.

Engineers create.

Engineers are artful.

And engineers get something done. Or they should. Otherwise, engineers stops short of their full potential. And that’s a shame.

I can’t help but wonder at times whether the industry has stopped short. I hear some firms espouse that the best job is “…one that never gets built.” Do you ever hear that in your firm? I understand and appreciate the context of the remark. In our ever growing litigious society, leaving a project on the drawing table is certainly a safer business proposition. Design. Get paid. Avoid liability. And walk away.

Do you draw a line between engineers who design and engineers who build? If you do, then you’re not engineering. And people who work in such an environment aren’t being developed as engineers. Oh, they will get the experience they need to sit for the PE exam, and most will pass. But those same folks may never look around the corner to see where true “engineering” could take them. They may never know the full measure of what it means to be an engineer.

In the late 1950′s, our industry was called on to create and fulfill a vision. Gosh darn it, did folks ever respond to that challenge with a mighty burst of energy, creativity and a “get something done” attitude. I wonder if that spark has gone out a bit? I’m not suggesting it has in every corner. I just wonder about it.

Listen, sometimes you can see something more clearly from afar. I hold engineers and engineering in the highest regard as people and as an industry. But when I think of “engineers” I think of designers and contractors in one group. People who are committed to the end game.

People who originate.

People who contrive — in a positive sense.

People who are artful.

People who bring something about.

If your eyes are not on the end game; well then, your eyes are not on the ball. And you’re missing out on a hell of a lot.

Be an engineer.
———

Philip Shucet

About the author, Philip Shucet:  Since 1972 Philip has enjoyed the excitement of working in the transportation engineering and contracting business.  His work has taken him across the country as well as across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  Especially meaningful to Philip was the time he spent as the Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Transportation from 2002 through 2005.  During his time at VDOT, Philip made a concerted effort to reinvigorate the value of “being an engineer” in that organization.  In December 2008, Philip set out on a new journey by creating his own company, The Philip A. Shucet Company, where he is focused on providing strategic advice to private companies interested in pursuing — and building — transportation projects.   Interestingly, he graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1972 with a degree in History.

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So one of the headlines from CNN.com on Wednesday read “Economists: Recession To End In 2009.” Reading this article got me to thinking that, now that we are beginning to see a little light at the end of the tunnel, what are some of the lessons that the civil engineering community has learned at the hands of this recession?

If you jump on the band wagon, be sure you pack a lot of padding for when the wheels fall off.

How GREAT was the land development boom in places like Las Vegas, Phoenix, and the greater Washington, DC area (just to name a few)? Engineering firms were actually turning away work from developers (or, working 90 hour work weeks because they couldn’t say “no.”); engineers of all levels were relocating to these “hot spots”; Professional Engineers were starting their own firms because they saw the dollar $ign$ that were there to be made; every engineer I spoke with was chomping at the bit to work for a home builder or developer, and vying for those positions was like trying to get into Walmart as the doors open on Black Friday. You don’t have to look very far to see what has happened in the wake of this recession. Home builders and developers are selling off land (if they can) and running on skeleton crews at best. As a result, many of the civil engineers who were living the high life during these boom years have since been acquainted with acronym “RIF.” Knowing where the market was in those regions during the real estate boom, check out some of the headlines from the Las Vegas Review Journal for 2009: http://www.lvrj.com/hottopics/housing.html. Did you know that average price for a single family home in Phoenix for 2009 is $103,953.00 vs. $283,472.00 in 2008 (Source: Realty Times – Phoenix, AZ). To see the effect in the outlying suburbs of Washington, DC , take a look at the Housing Market Outlook For The Washington, DC Region as prepared by Robert Charles Lesser & Company. My hope is that everyone who reaped the rewards of these robust land development markets was able to tuck away some of those lucrative bonuses and put them to use to help cushion their fall.

Diversify. Diversify. Diversify.

If you have stuck around long enough to read through the paragraph above, you know where I’m about to go here. How many firms do you know put all of their eggs in the land development basket? I guess you can’t blame them, right? That’s where all the business was and it did not take long to be completely bogged down with lucrative land development work. To come up for air and even consider anything else was nearly impossible. With all that money floating around, that would have been the best time to hire some key players in water/wastewater, municipal infrastructure, transportation and other areas of specialization in order to begin establishing a presence outside of the land development arena. All good things come to an end, so when they did, by diversifying you would have had built established relationships and developed a nice track record within the municipal sector that would have helped ease the pain of the real estate bust. Unfortunately, many firms failed to diversify and by the time they realized they needed to pursue work in other areas, it was too late…in fact, pursuing work with public and governmental agencies these days is like trying to get into Walmart as the doors open on Black Friday (yup, I used that analogy again). Everyone is lined up looking for a piece of the action, but only a few will be fortunate enough to walk away with that nice plasma television.

Beware of “Best Firms”. Are they only the “Best Firms” during the best of times?

Don’t get me wrong, there are many firms out there that deserve all the awards they receive for ethics, management style, benefits, employee training, employee incentive programs, employee retention, state-of-the-art technology, exciting projects, work environment, etc. In fact, there are many firms that would likely win those types of awards but just choose not to submit themselves for consideration. The best firms to work for, as I see it, are the ones that have strong business plans with strong leadership and that have had a fully executable game plan in place for when the market turned as it did. They produced high quality work at a reasonable price with a diverse client base. They stocked away some cash and had good working relationships with their bankers. They are coming out of this downturn with minimal damage. They way I see it, the firms that rise out of this downturn and recession with the least amount of collateral damage to its employees, they are the “Best Firms” to work for.

The best marketing is producing a quality product. True, but lose the crutch.

It has always been said that the best form of marketing is developing a quality product, which in turn will produce great returns as a result of repeat business. How true this is, not only for civil engineering, but for many industries. But avoid using this as a crutch. What happens when your client’s well runs dry? Be prepared to put on your sales and marketing cap and start pounding the pavement. To better prepare yourself, make sure you take some classes and seminars on this topic of marketing and business development in the civil engineering industry; or even better, find a mentor within your company. And then once you learn some of the strategies, don’t let them become dust collectors – make sure you put them to practice. Keep in mind, just because the repeat business keeps repeating itself does not mean you should not be “out there” in the mean time marketing your services to other prospective clients. This way, when your backlog runs low you will have a head start on the process, and your cold calls will now be warm calls.

Keep your resume polished up as often as your shoes.

Treat your resume as you would your finest pair of shoes. Imagine a pair of dress shoes that have not been polished up in a long time. They look fine when you finally get them done, but if you had kept them shined and polished regularly throughout the years they would remain in top notch condition. Top notch condition is the way you should also keep your resume. Every time you get a promotion or receive an award, update your resume. Everytime you speak at a conference or write a paper, update your resume. Everytime you complete a project, update your resume. This way, should you roll into work one day after 20 years of loyal service only to be greeted with a cup of coffee and a pink slip, you will not be scrambling.

There are certainly many other lessons to be learned as we scratch and claw our way back into multi-year backlogs, and these are just a few. What other lessons have you learned that you can share with our readers?

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