• Question: What factors would you consider in building an engineering department from scratch?

    Asked by 443fuee25 to Paul, Priyanka, Ryan, Sarah on 18 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Sarah Hargreaves

      Sarah Hargreaves answered on 18 Mar 2016:

      Hi,

      Some of the factors I would consider are:

      -location – the department should be based close to whoever they are going to be doing the work for as this allows good communication with your customer

      – Infrastructure – I would make sure that we had the right equipment to do the job such as computers, specialist software programmes etc.

      – team members skills – I would make sure that I had the right people to do the job with a mixture of experience. I would need someone with a lot of experience to lead the team and also help those people with less experience to learn new skills.

      – Support – as well as employing engineers I would need to consider employing people with non-engineering skills such as finance, IT, project management and administrative to make the department run smoothly ensuring we did the project on time and within the budget.

      Hope that answered your question 🙂

    • Photo: Ryan Bakewell

      Ryan Bakewell answered on 18 Mar 2016:

      I think it’s all about People, Process and Tools…

      People need to have the right competencies to do the job, as well as be positive, motivated and good at working in teams. You also need people to lead the activities and make sure the department as a whole is heading in the right direction (i.e. engineering and developing the right things).

      The Processes need to be set up to allow people to do the job correctly and on time. They also need to have sufficient flexibility in them to allow people to innovate i.e. the process shouldn’t stop people being inventive!

      The Tools need to be things like computers, specialist computer programmes, labs, vehicles, test facilities, IT infrastructire, coffee machines, canteens etc

      Thank should just about do it 🙂

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