Tag Archives: engineering codes

Recommended Actions for a Young Engineer-1 by Engr. John Cee Onwualu

HUNGER FOR KNOWLEDGE
This is one of the greatest steps to make you succeed as a professional engineer. As an Engineer, you must have that strong desire and willingness to learn new technical skills and apply the scientific and mathematical principles acquired during your engineering education.

This will enable you to create engineering designs in accordance with the code of practice and standards governing the engineering profession, which products will meet all safety and structural requirements for the comfort of mankind.

HUMILITY AND SINCERITY
Humility and Sincerity are parts of the challenges that shape a successful engineering career. A young Engineer desirous of growth in his or her career must follow the superiors with humility and sincerity coupled with a strong desire to learn.

These are the stimuli that your superiors want to see in you. It will motivate them to teach you the basic technical steps in your engineering field which most often defer in arrangements from textbook methods. This is where you learn how to correlate the academic work taught in engineering schools with what is practiced in the real world of work.

COURAGE AND INTEGRITY
Courage and Integrity are part of the challenges for a successful engineering career. You must be courageous and honest enough to approach senior partners/mentors in your profession to guide you through some of the basic steps needed in your early design works. Their technical review inputs on your work will make you a better Engineer.

Do not assume you know it, because many of our engineering personnel today lack that quality training and mentorship they should have obtained at their formative stage. You must eliminate fear from your mind when making decisions on design problems. Be courageous enough to take calculated risks and make decisions based on available information. It is important to note that to be a good engineer requires you to exhibit a character of courage and integrity, just as the habit of cleanliness is to the Surgeons in the operating theatre.

WORKING WITH STANDARD ENGINEERING CODES by Engr. John Cee Onwualu

The engineering profession is guided by standards, codes, and ethics of practice which set minimum safety guides for the profession. However, because we are in a dynamic world with lots of complexity occurring daily, the codes of practice have also become revolutionised with many countries coming out with their codes of practice to suit the dynamics of their environment.

For this reason, the British Standard (BS) code is now used alongside the European Standard codes (Eurocodes) in many countries, including Nigeria. Most engineering books nowadays come in both British Standard (BS) code and European Standard codes (Eurocodes). The use of either code in design does not invalidate the work of the designer.

It is important to get familiar with recent developments by reading these volumes of codes instead of relying on the use of only familiar and simplified codes.

For a young graduate, probably, the first challenge and one of the major decisions upon graduation from engineering school is the type of job to start with.

This decision is of great consequence because it defines the path to professional development. Some may choose to work as planning Engineers, Quality Engineers, Structural Engineers, Design Engineers, or Site Engineers while some may choose to become Bankers.

The establishment a young engineer chooses to work in may not be much of a problem compared to their personal determination, quality of training, and mentorship. All these put together will have defining roles in their lives as engineers.