Top 10 steps you should do to be a successful planning engineer

I am opening this topic for discussion on what you should know to be a planning engineer. “Should I Be an Engineer?”

Top 10 steps you should do to be a successful planning engineer.

I think there is a growing demand for planning engineers especially in the Middle East, some newly graduated engineers thinking to start their careers as planning engineers but they do not know what to do. Therefore I opened this discussion to share our knowledge and thoughts.

I will put my point of view and everyone is welcome to comment and share his/her thoughts.

To be a successful planning engineer you should do the following Engineering Planning and Management steps:

1.     Please take my golden advice NEVER EVER look for the salary in the first 5 years of your career:

Work to learn, then work to earn. Money will come later on if you are well-experienced and well-educated. Just look for the experience first (Big projects, international companies, professional managers….etc).

Even if it will cost you less salary or more effort, after a few years you may get the double salary of your colleagues because you planned for your future. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Most successful engineers succeed to plan in their careers from day 1.

2.     Do not start your career as a planning engineer:

I believe you should work as a site engineer first to know the sequence of work and to feel the site work environment and this will help you later to estimate activities durations and sequence activity.

I recommend working for 1 to 2 years as a site engineer to know Engineering Project Lessons Learned. However, if you don’t have this opportunity, don’t wait and start working immediately. Start your first job as Technical Office Engineer, QS Engineer… etc but with a clear plan that you are going to shift to Planning within 1-2 years.

3.    Enhance your computer software knowledge:

While you are working as a site engineer you need to enhance your software experience to be able to go to the next level.

At least you should know AutoCAD, Excel, Word, and of course our favorite software Primavera.

Do a schedule for the work you are supervising and show it to the project planning engineer and get his/her advice.

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4.     Next Level, Join the technical office:

After you spent 1 or 2 years as a site engineer try to join the technical office on the site, mainly trying to work as a quantity surveyor Q.S.

This will improve your skills to read the drawings and to feel the numbers. Remember that the planning engineer job mainly deals with numbers such as quantities, productivity, progress percentages, manpower….etc.

A successful planning engineer needs to know how to make a fast and accurate quantity surveyor or even to be monitoring a quantity surveyor under the planning engineering department. I recommend working for 1 year as a quantity surveyor.

5.     Study project management:

The real planning engineer, not the one who knows primavera only, should know the concept of project management and this will make your life much easy.

So I recommend studying the PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP)^®  during your work as a quantity surveyor Q.S., try to be certified by PMI because this will help you to go to the next level.

6.     Next level, work as a scheduler or a junior planning engineer:

If you succeeded to become a Project Management Professional (PMP)^® certified, then it will be easy to find a scheduler or a junior planning engineer job.

Remember at this stage you still looking for experience, not money. I recommend working as a scheduler or a junior planning engineer for 2 years and it is better to complete one or more projects from the very beginning to the very end.

7.  Primavera and Microsoft Excel are the core tools for the planning engineer:

During your work as a scheduler or a junior planning engineer, you should reach an advanced level in Primavera and Excel’s latest versions.

I recommend taking advanced courses (could be online courses)

8.     Sharing your knowledge and experience with others:

Some people may think that if they share their knowledge and experience with others, it reduces their chance to be special and give others more power with a negative impact on the one who is sharing his ideas, knowledge, and experience with others.

This is not true because the moment you think that you know everything is the same moment you will start falling behind.

Sharing knowledge and experience is a perfect method to promote yourself and find out many many mistakes that you were doing and think that everything is perfect. Just try it.

9.     Next start looking for a stable position with a good salary:

After reaching step no. 8 you should be qualified for a good position as a planning engineer, but I recommend looking for a stable company with good salaries for the next 3 to 4 years. Work stability will be a factor now in your CV.

Therefore I recommend choosing a stable company, or even if your existing company is stable that is fine.

10. Continue learning and improve your skills & knowledge:

You can do this by taking the basic courses to sharpen your knowledge.

Then by checking the planning engineers’ websites, groups, and social media communities, or even study a master’s degree in management.

At the end of this article, I want to draw your attention to the self-motivation factors which will keep you going on the right road to success. Never be disappointed by your mistakes or by others’ judgment.

Remember the more you work, the more chance you will do mistakes. The difference between the successful planning engineer and the loser planning engineer is that the first one learns from his mistakes, and the second one gets disappointed easily.

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