Construction managers must understand contracts, plans, specifications, and regulations.

It is customary to think of engineering as a part of a trilogy, pure science, applied science and engineering. It needs emphasis that this trilogy is only one of a triad of trilogies into which engineering fits.

· The first is pure science, applied science and engineering.

· The second is economic theory, finance and engineering.

· The third is social relations, industrial relations and engineering.

Many engineering problems are as closely allied to social problems as they are to pure science.

As engineers advance professionally, they often spend as much or more time on planning, management and other economic or social problems as on the traditional engineering design and analysis problems which form the core of most educational programs. It is upon the ability of engineers to tackle all such problems that their performance will ultimately be judged.

Paradoxically, engineers who are creative in engineering design are often innovative in planning and management since both types of activities involve problem solving. In fact, they can reinforce each other if both are included in the education process, provided that creativity and innovation instead of routine practice are emphasized. A project manager who is well educated in the fundamental principles of engineering design and management can usefully apply such principles once he or she has acquired basic understanding of a new application area. A project manager who has been trained by rote learning for a specific type of project may merely gain one year of experience repeated twenty times even if he or she has been in the field for twenty years. A broadly educated project manager can reasonably hope to become a leader in the profession; a narrowly trained project manager is often relegated to the role of his or her first job level permanently.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 921