Top Questions Engineering Students Ask

Recently, the list of people who passed the civil board exams was released. The Civil Board Exam is crucial for anyone aiming to build a career in engineering.

As part of JCVA’s passion for helping young engineers and building the local engineering community, JCVA held Engineered to Win: From CE Boards to the Boardroom last March 25. The event featured JCVA’s President, Jason Valderrama, and Kippap’s founder, Victor Villanueva. With the wisdom of the two generations, we have sought to answer glaring questions of engineers-to-be.

1. How impactful is placing in the top 10?

Both Victor and Jason think that placing the top 10 on the boards does have a great impact but only to a certain extent. Jason explained that placing top 10, as he did years back, can get you a lot of job offers off the bat. However, it’s not necessarily a good precedent for a good career. How work and how strategic you are in your career will matter more in the long run.

1. What’s the best advice to help plan a career?

With Jason’s many years of experience, he answered that you really have to perform in your first work. You have to do the work and even go beyond your job description if you can. You have to be able to show that you can handle projects and show you have leadership potential. You also have to be smart with your career moves as well which includes avoiding job-hopping.

1. Can you ace the boards even if you failed a subject in college?

Victor, who runs an Engineering Boards review center, tells of a case of an exam taker who has failed a class while at university and still became top 5 when he took the exam. He said it doesn’t correlate. The board exams are a whole new game and if you work hard and play it right, you can ace it.

1. Is it better to review full-time or can you do it part-time?

Both speakers acknowledged that being able to review full-time is the best option. If you can review full-time, go do it. With this, you can focus more on studying and taking care of your body to be able to take the exam. With just studying full-time, you can build better routines and study habits. Victor shares a lot of his study routines on his youtube and this has been a great guide to many.

If you’d like to watch Engineered to Win: From CE Boards to the Boardroom, the full video is available here. The event consists of a short talk from both speakers and a Q&A portion after.

At JCVA, we dream of building the future with the Filipino youth. Have any plans to hold similar events? Partner with us. Email us at info@jcvassociates.ph and visit www.jcvassociates.ph to know more about our consultancy offerings.

7 Reasons Why You Need A Project Manager

Project management processes keep your plans organized down to each detail. From stakeholders to suppliers, and clients, each role and responsibility are communicated and monitored regularly. Properly managed projects result in increased revenues and business growth, making it essential to recognize the significance of project planning.

Are you still gauging whether to get a project manager for your project or wondering how great of an investment it is to hire them? To help you see the practicality, we have listed 7 reasons why you need a project manager now!

1. Increase Project Success Rate

It has been demonstrated that implementing project management principles boosts your chances of success by up to 2.5 times. Having seasoned and highly competent industry professionals oversee your project will result in a better outcome.

2. Improve Efficiency

Tasks can be streamlined and delegated to suitable teams by project managers. When everyone knows what tasks to prioritize and focus on, the team's efficiency and quality of results improve.

3. Reduce Risks and Costs

Project managers are in charge of overseeing project assessment. This approach assists in anticipating and identifying risks in order to establish a risk response process that will help you reduce project expenses.

4. Project Tracking

Project managers oversee your project from beginning to end, ensuring that all required deliverables are met on time, managing progress, and ensuring that everything is in line with your goals.

5. Reduce Miscommunication

Project managers will be your primary point of contact for communication and will submit a report on a regular basis. They communicate objectives and performance to executives, your team, departments, and clients.

6. Administer Procurements

In order to ensure that suppliers and project customers comply with the terms of their contracts, project managers monitor vendor transactions closely.

7. Project Scope Control

Project managers are in charge of the project scope and the work and activities that must be completed in order for the project to be successful. By putting markers in place, they prevent making continuous revisions to the initial project plans.

Pave Your Way to Success

Project management is here to make your life easier by streamlining your processes. A project manager is an extremely valuable asset to any organization and in the long run, this will keep your company one step ahead of the competition. Their absence may cause your projects to be delayed, budget costs to rise, and the time required to complete the project extended. With a clear understanding of where you are and what your next steps should be,, a project manager will deliver a project that goes more smoothly from start to finish.

Sources:

• https://www.fortuitas.com/insights/7-reasons-why-you-need-a-project-manager

• https://work.chron.com/project-expeditor-vs-project-coordinator-3572.html

• https://blog.fiverr.com/post/5-reasons-why-you-need-a-project-manager

Top Skills for Project Management

In any other engineering field, project management is not just about technical skills and intelligence. Equally important are people skills, the ability to listen, and to present technical concepts to just about anybody. Below we break down the skills required of a project manager for those aspiring to be one in the Philippines:

1. Technical Skills

We’ll start with the obvious one: project managers need technical knowledge and skills. It’s the foundation of the work: they need to show mastery in engineering to be able to handle project management work.

As always, grades during university do not give the full picture of someone’s skills but it does give people an idea of how well they understand concepts that are needed at work. There’s a board exam in this field exactly because there are important concepts and information engineers need to know.

1. People Skills

Aside from technical construction knowledge, people skills are also important. Project management involves handling different types of people with not just different expertise but different personalities. A project manager has to be able to synergize all of those. Unlike technical skills, this is not something you can master by reading. This is usually learned by practice and through experience.

1. Planning

As they always say: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. In project management, bulk of the work is planning, which is so important. There is so much to consider and a lot of scenarios and risks to foresee to be able to plan and execute well for a construction project. The best planner sees all worst-case scenarios and knows what to do in case they do happen.

Aside from this, good project managers are on-time. No matter what happens in a project, it is finished on schedule.

1. Negotiation

Great project managers are always on-budget. However, like what everyone knows in the industry, that could be challenging given there are unexpected expenses that would pop up. Aside from that, it could be hard to stick to the original plan. This is where negotiating skills come in.

Good negotiation skills are honed through understanding the current landscape, the culture where you are coming from, and some communication skills.

1. Leadership

The best teams are led by the best leaders. You need technical skills to be able to do projects but it takes a great leader to be able to plan and execute them well. Great project managers are great leaders.

At JCVA, our project managers are our best assets. With their wealth of experience, skills and knowledge, they will deliver your project to success. Have any questions about our services? Email us at info@jcvassociates.ph and visit www.jcvassociates.ph to know more about our consultancy offerings.