HOW TO BECOME A GOOD CHEMICAL ENGINEER

The new graduate chemical engineer will have multiple paths to a challenging, interesting and rewarding career. Chemical engineers have found good careers in plant operations, research, marketing, sales, and management.

               As my career progressed primarily in the technical area, I have often been asked by both recent graduates and managers – “What are the secrets of your success?” In my semi-retirement, I have had an opportunity to reflect on my career and ask myself questions such as

·        Why was I successful?

·        What made my career enjoyable?

·        What advice would I give to a new graduate engineer?

               While my comments are coming from a chemical engineering knowledge base, I believe that they apply to all engineering disciplines and to some extent to all jobs. I have considered what advice I would give to a new engineer. I have split this advice into 5 categories. They are listed below. The order is not important.

·        Defining Success

·        Developing Relational Skills

·        Using Your Technical Training

·        Expanding Your Technical Skills

·        Putting Safety First

DEFINING SUCCESS

               Defining success is an area that is not covered in engineering studies or in continuing education courses. However, it is one of the keys to a rewarding career. In my case, my definition of success was a combination of having work that utilized my chemical engineering skills, making a significant contribution, being considered as an expert in my field and being financially rewarded. I was not interested in status associated with higher levels of managerial titles. I also realize in retrospect that my financial reward was not always equivalent to my contributions. However, since I was fulfilling 3 out of 4 of my success criteria and “putting food on the table”, I deemed myself a success.  As I gained in experience and technical knowledge, I realized that I had another success goal – being a good mentor. As a mentor, I have told many new graduates to find a job that they enjoyed at least 70-80% of the time.

DEVELOPING RELATIONAL SKILLS

               Engineering education does not prepare new graduate for a future of work which involves interfacing with people. A new graduate regardless of their job selection will work with a wide variety of people. His/her new associates will have different educational level, different personalities, different ethnic or culture backgrounds, different work ethics and/or different life-goals. Because engineering education is calculation-based engineers must learn human relational skills. Among the more important of these are as follows:

·        Learn to listen actively and intently – Listening intently often means asking questions to make sure that you understand. The key is do not make assumptions of what the speaker means. The speaker maybe difficult to understand because English is not his/her primary language, there are misunderstandings even when English is both the speaker’s and listener’s primary language, or the speaker is using terminology that is not familiar to the listener. There are two techniques that I have found that have helped me to listen intently. I take notes to both aid my memory and to cause me to focus on the speaker and his words. The second technique is actively considering what was NOT said. Often there is a subtle exclusion of some important information.  An active listener will generally be focusing on the speaker and not multi-tasking.

·        Know your Audience – When speaking to a group or individual, carefully consider their interest, education, background and their time available. Perhaps Lord Rutherford’s statement – “A theory that cannot be explained to a bartender is not a very good theory” explains this point well. Another aspect of this area of communications is that the speaker must watch and gage the audience to confirm that they are actively and intently listening.

·        Respect All –Regardless of a new graduate’s first job, he will encounter people of different personalities, different education levels, different ethnic groups, different cultures and different moral standards. In order to create effective working relationships with the different groups, the new graduate must show respect for these different groups. It should be recognized that respect does not mean acceptance. Respect is defined as “a sense of the worth or excellence of another person”.  This respect must be shown by words or deeds.

·        Be Honest – The universes where new graduates are employed will often create an environment where the impact of communicating bad news can be often be softened by the clever use of phrases and/or words. On the other hand, the impact of good news, can often be enhanced by the same techniques. My experience was that the people that I was communicating with needed my most honest analysis in order to make good decisions.

USING YOUR TECHNICAL TRAINING        

               Many graduates arrive at their first jobs with educational training that consists of training in fundamentals and experimental techniques. In the chemical engineering field, this likely involves preliminary courses such as chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, and basic heat/material balances. They then move into the experimental phase and take courses that involve computer simulation or special laboratory experiments. Most of these courses are taught by instructors that have only very limited industrial experience. This creates a void of application of fundamentals to real world problems. They then move into industry where they find chemical engineers doing most of their work by logical problem solving without involving fundamental chemical engineering knowhow or developing fundamentally wrong shortcuts. They soon realize that industrial pressures create incentive to avoid use of fundamental skills. Some examples are as follows:

·        A graduate from a well-known university calculating the head developed by a compressor (compressible fluid) by techniques developed for pumps (incompressible fluid).

·        An experienced engineer for an E&C company insisting that a heat and material balance was not necessary because they could just scaleup equipment and piping from an existing process.

·        An engineer that examined the formula CH20 and tried to estimate the boiling point of sea water rather than looking up the boiling point for formaldehyde.

               The almost universal rebuttal for insistence on doing the necessary fundamental calculations is that there isn’t time. The cliché that “There is never enough time to do the job right, but there is always enough time to do it right the second time” is often true. For the sake of completeness, I should cover the fact that there are problems or questions that come up in industry where there is truly not enough time to do calculations. These situations are normally handled by experienced people that have seen the problem before. The sports world is filled with decisions that are made by experienced people in a split second with no calculations.

CONTINUING DEVELOPING TECHNICAL SKILLS 

               A new graduate regardless of his level of training or chosen field of work must continue developing skills. There are several aspects of developing technical skills. These are summarized as follows:

·        Continuing Academic Education – Academic Education can come several ways. One can attend a university both in person and on-line in pursuit of an advancement degree or a degree in another field of study. In addition, several organizations sponsor short courses that range from a   one-hour webinar to an academic setting lasting for one or two weeks. These short courses usually are narrowly focused and present a great bit of detail on specific subjects.

·        Technical Publications – Technical publications such as books, trade journals and articles on LinkedIn represent another avenue of developing technical skills. The information contained in these publications can range from very practical to highly theoretical. This range of content can be of value to both a professional that is practical minded or to one that is theoretical minded. For example, the practical minded engineer may think that a publication that deals with the rate of diffusion of a hydrocarbon in air is too theoretical to be of use. However, modelling the spread of a hydrocarbon from a leaking vessel might well be able to use this information.

·        Understand Simulation Programs -There is a tendency for many engineers to use computer simulation programs without fully understanding the basic assumptions and modelling techniques that were used in developing the program. Understanding the basic engineering theory and the convergence techniques utilized by these programs is a technique for technical development. An example of this might be the simulation of stripping of volatile hydrocarbons from a polymer. The simulation engineer might have just used the least volatile hydrocarbon in the existing data base to simulate the polymer. A more accurate method would be to use the Flory-Huggins equation to develop the polymer-hydrocarbon equilibrium relationship. Spending the extra time to understand the simulation program and the Flory-Huggins relationship is a “on the job” means of technical development.

·        Regardless of a graduate’s field of study, he will often need to learn at least the basics of another field. In my case, as a chemical engineer, I found it necessary and helpful to learn some basic mechanical engineering skills such as growth of materials as they are heated, check valves and how they are used with pumps and compressors, how chemical engineering is applied to instrumentation or mechanical seals. I developed this know-how by discussion with other engineers and mechanics as well as by literature research.

PUTTING SAFETY FIRST

               A new graduate engineer is often faced with the environment that he/she has only a cursory training in safety and the company that he/she is working for has a safety department. He/she will be faced with the question of what is his/her role in considering safety. This question becomes important when he/she is assigned a project that involves new procedures, new products, new facilities, or new chemicals. It also becomes critical when he/she is given a production supervisory position. The concept of putting safety first involve both education and attitude.

               Most companies have safety education programs. Unfortunately, many of these programs are directed at hourly workers and emphasize safe handling of tools and other equipment. The engineering graduate will need to use information available from the internet, MSDS sheets or handbooks to determine such parameters as explosive range, flash point, decomposition temperature, and toxicity for new chemicals or new products. New facilities will require an in-depth safety review using techniques such as HAZOP. Change in operating techniques or test runs will also require this sort of in-depth review. An example of an inadequate review of operating changes is the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident.

               In preparation for a future role where an enhanced knowledge of safety is important, the open literature can often be a source of skill development. The Chemical Safety Board publishes reports on investigation of major events.  Trade journals often publish summaries of accidents and discussions of engineering aspects of safety related risks.