The company I’m currently with handles highly specialized works in the field of Civil Engineering. Most of the time when potential clients ask our Project Managers if we can do a job other firms turned down and/or are incapable of doing, their answer (usually) is a straight yes!
Amidst all the hoopla of creating deliverables, of sticking to schedules, and of balancing workloads are our technical staff – our most important resource. These guys do most of the heavy lifting, the leg works, the dirty things. These men and women care much and bring tremendous energy and enthusiasm to their work. They hone their skills day in and day out and absorbs as much as they can from their experienced senior engineers. Second to the lead professionals, they know what goes on a project and the strategies that are involved involved. These guys know their stuff and are not push-overs. You would want to take them too lightly.
Just recently, three of us – that’s Dona, Ralph and me, began bouncing ideas about work and our discussion segued to creating materials showcasing our engineering capabilities for both academic and industry use. Such materials are rare and far between and creating such a pool of knowledge will not only benefit our firm but the community we are part of. Our firm is strongly connected to the College of Engineering at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and doing scholarly works are part of our DNA.
The initial ideas we came up with are (1) to come up with materials about real-life projects and the methodologies our teams used to come up with engineering solutions for real-life problems. (2) These materials will then be Creative Commons licensed for academic use. Much like a peer-reviewed journal, (3) the methodologies/solutions will be open for everyone to peruse and to review. Methodologies will be presented in such a way that (4) no personally identifiable information about the projects will be revealed – much focus will be given on the methods used and little else for the project details.
The objectives of the whole exercise are three-fold:
- to harness the knowledge about how a certain problem is approached
- to harness the enthusiasm of the staff and encourage scholarship
- and lastly, to create a repository of civil engineering knowledge that other people can learn from
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we can get this project off the ground…
azneita projects 