Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a civil engineering manager and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A civil engineering manager is responsible for leading other junior civil engineers and technicians as they develop, update, and test different civil projects. The manager acts as the overall overseer on the engineering team and he/she is widely consulted by their juniors.
His/her primary responsibilities include leading and supervising civil engineers, technicians, and scientists who work on civil projects. They also oversee the quality control of the projects, examine drawings of the projects, and provide further insights. Furthermore, they provide guidelines on the materials, resources, expertise, and any other requirements of a particular civil project. Other duties include recruitment and conducting performance reviews among other administration responsibilities.
Core Skills Required to be a Civil Engineering Manager
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A civil engineering manager should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Collaborating with others:
Collaborating is willingly working with one another and cooperating in whatever task one is assigned without behaving poorly or having an attitude change that hurts others.
A Civil Engineering Manager is meant to collaborate with all workers and management both male and female without causing frustrations or sidelining any worker or delaying their promotion from any informal conversations where most decisions are often made.
Facilitation:
Facilitation is making tasks or life easy for others while ensuring the daily running of successful meetings or workshops or business at large.
A Civil Engineering Manager must use facilitation to process and structure a system that meets the needs of either an individual or a team to help them achieve their goals as well as add value to their lives by making sure each participates.
Networking:
Networking is the process that encourages an exchange of information and ideas among individuals or groups that share the same interests.
A Civil Engineering Manager is required to establish policies and procedures that govern networking to form professional relationships that will boost the future of business and employment prospects while maintaining regular contact with each other to gain each other's trust thus developing few quality relationships.
Developing Others:
Developing others is an unremitting process that focuses on the broader, longer-term growth of individuals to nurture them to their potential and promote future development.
A Civil Engineering Manager needs to support, coach, positively impacts and effectively aid in developing talents of their staff by motivating them to become outstanding in their behavioral change and performance improvement that opens up development opportunities in the organization.
Equal Opportunity and Diversity:
Equal Opportunity and Diversity means having employees from a wide range of background that includes different ages, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious belief, educational background, physical ability and treating them equally.
A Civil Engineering Manager is required by the law to create a workplace free from discrimination and harassment to its employees as well as understand and adhere to the rights and responsibilities under the human rights and antidiscrimination law.
Handling Stress:
Handling Stress is the skill to balance the requirements of the job and your abilities or available resources in performing it.
A Civil Engineering Manager needs to creatively learn how to schedule work according to the abilities of different individuals to ensure a balance that will not put an unsustainable level of pressure on the employees and cause them to accumulate work related stress.
Practical Thinking:
Practical Thinking is the skill to think creatively about projects or work that requires your full attention to be completed and to bring great results.
A Civil Engineering Manager must ensure the decisions he makes are well sought after using professional characteristics for employees with high-level responsibilities to feel included and to allow growth for everyone in a constantly changing world that requires creativity.
Project Management:
Project Management is structuring a to-do list for your project or company containing tasks and responsibilities as well as creating a roadmap for the execution of those duties promptly.
A Civil Engineering Manager must place emphasis on the application of the project management methodologies and principles by the staff in the daily functions and responsibilities to foster efficiently as well as create a competitive advantage in the heavily competitive business space.
Business Trend Awareness:
Business Trend Awareness is the capacity to be conscious of the changing ways in which the companies are developing in the marketplace.
A Civil Engineering Manager should have the required knowledge of new business trends that he can instigate or follow and the understanding of how they are impacting the business decisions which will eventually bring success to the employees as well as the enterprise
Mechanical Skills:
Mechanical Skills are the abilities to solve problems that arise in the workplace, although it may vary from one company to another.
A Civil Engineering Manager must be well equipped with technical skills to handle any underlying mechanical problem that may arise from wrong scheduling to meeting unique customer needs, budget, legal constraints, environmental and social issues, technology changes and any other management requirements.
Hard Skills Required to be a Civil Engineering Manager
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A civil engineering manager should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.