Engineers and engineering managers are swamped with work. That includes you, probably. Asking you to spend hours or days changing your processes isn’t feasible. Too many projects are already over budget and behind schedule. In fact, you’re likely thinking about meetings and specs while you read this. But don’t leave yet! There’s a payoff in the next 500 words. I promise.
Forget the hours and days of shaking up documentation practices, or retyping formulas, or out-of-state training. All you need for big change is tiny steps. Small, incremental habits that add up faster than you think. Let’s get to it.
Good documentation is the heart of any engineering project. Without records, you’re left scratching your head later because the calculations behind your design aren’t obvious. At best, you use deductive reasoning and figure out most of the puzzle. At worst, you guess, with disastrous results. Either way, it isn’t ideal.
PTC Mathcad can serve as an electronic engineering notebook, where you can document your calculations with textbook-like clarity.
More than 50% of projects are late and over budget when communication is poor, according to the Project Management Institute. An engineer stepping into your project later won’t have days and months of calculations and models rolling around in their brain. They start fresh. Your communication is critical to their understanding of the design intent. Otherwise, the entire project is at risk of dragging on or running up costs.
Documenting the major calculations isn’t enough. Write down every decision you make and why you make it. Think of it as creating a flowchart of the entire process. Adding those small bits of documentation - your decisions and why you make them - gives future team members (and future You) an easier time understanding the full project.
You don’t want to spend days poring through binders and completing curriculum? Understandable. You have deadlines and impatient clients whose chief concern isn’t your fading skill set. But you still need to keep up, so what to do?
Fortunately, Germany’s Dresden University of Technology says bite-sized eLearning works in your favor. Ingesting small amounts of information, as opposed to larger blocks, lead to 20% better retention rates in their study. Those same learners answered their review questions 28% faster, too.
A few minutes of microlearning each day or week adds up to a lot of knowledge after a year. And while your way of using your engineering math software feels good enough, might find ways to do the same work in less time.
Want to check out Mathcad for yourself a few minutes every day and see how much your skills grow? Download your free-for-life copy of Mathcad Express here.
Mike Gayette is a marketing professional and freelance writer based in North Dakota. He writes about engineering software, marketing technology, customer service, and team building. He also spends time at the local humane society as a dog walker and cat entertainer.
