9 Skills For A Site Engineer – Must Maintain

Some of my friends from different “social networks” they’d asked me about “what are the skills that we need to learn?” They are Site Engineers. So I’ve come to realize that it is better to make an article about “Skills for a Site Engineer.”

Before I became a quality engineer, which I did not mention in my About Me page, I was a Site Engineer and eventually became a Project Engineer in a construction company based in Manila, Philippines, but our project is located in Puerto Princesa City, Philippines, where the seven wonders of the world are located at, the “Underground River.” Opps! I am getting off the track, lol…

You can check out the skills of a quality engineer I wrote in this article  “Skills that a quality engineer must have” for you to compare. Or consider.

The importance of having skills is enormous, it could make your image developed tremendously. You might be promoted immediately as well, and your income will grow, perhaps directly proportional to your skills. So, if you are a site engineer, you might want to achieve these skills for a site engineer that I am going to write.

1. Good English Communication Skills.

Most of the skills this one is a really, really important one. You have to focus on this.

A site engineer job is more on communication. As I mentioned in the article linked above that 80 percent of the job of an engineer is communicating with other people whether with a co-staff, site crews, consultant and might as well to the employer. So you must acquire this skill, good English communication skills.

If you have good English, because this is our international language wherever you want to work, you can still relate with your co-workers and you can express your point across to others. This is one of the best skills for a site engineer that you would consider focusing on.

Where you can get this skill? This might be your question.

You can find a technical school in your place and enroll in a “Technical English Course.” You can even find a tutor, make a schedule of your tutorial time. You can make it after work. If you just want to do it yourself, well! That’s fine, you can surf the internet and find articles about English grammar, vocabulary, etc.

I’ll tell you what I did. Once I found a word that I do not know, I immediately opened my dictionary or when I am in front of my computer I just looked up my installed dictionary. And this was what I recently found, I installed an offline dictionary to my android mobile so that I can easily look-up any unfamiliar words that I might find.

2. Management Skills (this is one of the most important skills for a site engineer).

This skill can be learned, can be taught. But when you have entered into the construction world, you had to experience seeing your project manager, construction manager, and project engineer “how they managed the operation in construction?” It means that you can learn this skill through experience because along the way you can adapt it with your strategy.

But if you want to discover more, I suggest seeking a training school that teaches management skill and you’ll quickly learn from it.

3. Good Writing Skills.

If you have “good writing skill” it can make you grow faster in your career, people will like you if you are good at writing.

To be good at writing, you have to be good at English grammar. When you are good at grammar, your writing will be easy to read and understand by your readers.

What will you write? Good that you asked this.

You will write correspondence towards co-staff, project engineer, construction manager, project manager, and subcontractors as well. If you consider other skills to follow, you can treat this as one of your most prioritized skills for a site engineer.

4. Analytical Skill.

Analytical Skill! You might be asking “what is an analytical skill?” This skill is also one of the most important skills for a site engineer.

This is your ability to analyze problems that occurred on your project. Your ability to plan and to program the works, the ability to gather information, and solving problems. And based on that occurrences you could be able to make decisions.

Like for example, if an activity is delayed due to a lack of resources. How do you analyze that? How do you make plans and decisions to resolve it? What are the necessary solutions to be applied in order to overcome the delays?

5. Numerical Skill.

This skill should be learned from school during your college days, and you should remember the basic formulas for volumes, areas, and height.

Like for example in my experience, we were going to cast concrete on the semi-sphere hollow dome on top of the entrance lounge of the building, then we should know how to compute the volume of concrete required for that concrete element. It is simply the formula for the volume of sphere. 

6. Problem-Solving Skill.

This is your ability to analyze problems and solve complex problems that occurred in your project. If you could solve problems on an urgent basis that would probably give a high impact on the progress of your project and then that will reflect with your reputation.

How this would happen? I’ll give you one example; the casting of footings, most probably 50 footings, and your concrete pump accidentally broke down, you have no solution to operating back-in the concrete pump. So what you will do is to use your machineries like boom loader, ready-made chutes (wooden or plain sheet), or if you have lots of laborers they can use pail or bucket. This is what we call  a “minute decision making.” 

7. Technical Skill.

Technical skill is the ability to plan your work, you should know how to plan your activity and disseminate it to your site foreman. You should know how to read the drawings. The ability to read drawing is the major skill of a site engineer, if you have hardships on reading drawings, I suggest enrolling in a training school or you might think of hiring a tutor.

But if you do not want to get any training, you will still learn along the way as you progress, they said: “any skill can be learned.” There are people who are fast learners and there are people who are slow learners, but in any way, you will still learn it even how slow learners you are.

8. Presentation Skill.

This is the ability to present your knowledge about construction strategy, planning, programming, etc., as a site engineer you should be able to stand out on the crowd, it can be during a meeting or site management visit or rather in your site group presentations. I suggest maintaining these presentation skills as one of your skills for a site engineer.

9. Knowledge of computers and programs.

Yes! This is so so important because computers and programs are a means of communication. Whether it is writing, emailing, printing. Writing your correspondences, you will write in a word format, so you will use Microsoft word. If you are logging your schedules, programs, etc. you may use Microsoft Excel, and when it comes to presentations that sometimes you will present in front of your superiors during your weekly meeting. How are you going to do the project or a certain critical activity, so in this case, you might as well use Microsoft PowerPoint.

There are many more programs that you should know like, Microsoft outlook, there you will send all your messages, in the design like Autocad,  Primavera (basic), etc.

These are the 9 skills for a site engineer that you should learn that could possibly speed up the improvement of your career.

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Did you learn the above skills for a site engineer? If yes, please comment “yes” in the comment section below.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net