Welcome to my blog, and in this article, I will be writing 3 important tips on how to use your experience as a Project Manager when you are writing the career episodes of your CDR (Competency Demonstration Report).
But first, for those that don’t know me, my name is Gerson Ida, founder of www.engineersinaustralia.com, a website to share valued content and useful information to assist you in the journey to validate your engineering qualification in Australia. Also to share the day to day of an engineer and to discuss subjects about workplace health and safety, environmental management and job opportunities.
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As engineering professionals, it is very common for us to have experience as a Project Manager, and we can fall into a trap if we emphasize our experience in career episodes when we are preparing the CDR.
During my experience as an interviewer for Engineers Australia and also as a recruiter of engineers here in Australia, every now and then I come across engineers who end up focusing on project management principles talking about how well they performed the job or service on time, below cost, with the desired quality, with great teamwork and etc … without relating to the skills required by Engineers Australia. You cannot forget that you are validating as an Engineer, not as a Project Manager.
Here are the 3 Tips to avoid falling into this trap:
Tip # 1: If you are going to use some “soft skills” experience as a Project Manager in any of the career episodes, do it within the competencies in PE3 Professional and Personal Attributes, where it is the appropriate place to name some of those experiences, for example, your good performance in communications management, can be explored in PE3.2 Effective oral and written communication in professional and lay domains. You can give examples of project meetings, elaborated reports, etc.
Another example is when you are describing your experience in Human Resources management, if you were a team leader, or a team member, and you managed their performance, or clarified their roles, so productivity was improved, in this case, you could include that paragraph under the competency PE3.6 which is about team membership and leadership.
Tip # 2: Use and abuse your experience in Project Quality Management, writing the standards and technical specifications used to monitor the project quality, service or engineering activity performed. In the case of Civil Engineering, for example, if you designed a structure, you could mention that you used ABNT NBR 6118/2014 Design of Concrete Structures when you were preparing a beam design, for example, and that you considered the predominant mechanisms of deterioration related to the reinforcement, such as Carbon and Carbon chloride action. In this case, there are few competencies you could be using this paragraph, for example, PE2.4 which is about the management of engineering projects, PE2.3 which is about design processes, even under PE2.1 which is about the application of established methods.
Tip # 3: How to use Stakeholder Management in career episodes? This is an area widely used in project management, as the good project manager is always keeping his “Stakeholders” informed about the project status to avoid surprises during the project delivery. But how to explore this area within the career episodes?
Well, every engineer or design engineer knows that one of the design fundamental principles is to consult and understand the customer’s requirements, what will be the impacts for the users of the final product, how to obtain the best benefits for the main interested in the product, work or service. This experience can certainly be used in the episodes to address part of the required skills. So, if you write that you confirmed the design scope and requirements with your customer, you could be including that paragraph for the PE2.3 which is a design competency. Or If you prepared monthly project reports to keep your stakeholders informed, then this paragraph could be used under PE3.2 which is a competency about oral and written communication.
Well folks, these are just 3 important hints on putting your experience as a Project Manager when writing the career episodes of the CDR (Competency Demonstration Report).
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Thank you very much for your reading time and I will see you again in my next article.
See you. Bye Bye
Gerson Ida
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