There is a lot written about how to prioritize your work tasks. Everyone tries to develop a matrix where we sort the urgent and the non-urgent; the important versus the unimportant. We may try to avoid or fall into the trap of “last come, first served” to the cubicle. We have a host of lists and tools to organize our day. There is a steady stream of emails, Outlook Calendar reminders, people at the coffee machine, etc. It is hard being white collar.

Now here is a very simple algorithm for deciding which tasks should leapfrog which, in your office work as an engineer: supporting your people in the field is the top priority.

Prize: figure everything out while sweating in 40 deg C on 2 hours of sleep

How does this make for a reasonable principle?

First off, recognize the mounting pressures that engineers at a construction site, especially in the late stages of construction/commissioning, are under, not that the following are well described in an undergraduate curriculum. Any of us that spend time out there have experienced the following. May be slight exaggerations, but not too much:

  1. Half of the equipment that arrived on site isn’t precisely what you ordered.
  2. The other half either hasn’t arrived on time or has walked off.
  3. The commissioning deadline is fast approaching.
  4. You may not be responsible for everything, but you’re the closest person the commissioning manager can find to scream at (see #3).
  5. Strange food, beds, and bugs.
  6. Long days and nights (see #3).
  7. Internet from the 1980s.
  8. Sketchy and unfamiliar roads, often with farm implements, animals, or pedestrians (sometimes drunk).
  9. No job site is perfectly safe.
  10. Folks at the home office that clock out at 17:00, just when you need important questions answered.
  11. An environment either too hot, too cold, too rainy, too windy, too dusty, or too something else.

If you are a young engineer that’s too green to have been sent out in the field much on challenging assignments, and never experienced the above items or others I’ve overlooked, then you will not yet appreciate the sort of physical and mental stresses that can be present. If you are a young/mid-tier engineer that has indeed experienced these, you recognize that your mental and technical facilities can be stretched to the limit or beyond, and any bit of sanity and legwork that people can do in the home office to help you solve problems has inestimable worth.

I’m very mixed on field assignments. They are essential to developing your expertise and to gain respect from people who don’t cotton to pencil pushers. There are good field assignments, difficult ones, bad ones, but hardly ever easy ones. There are people that love to spend 100% of their time in the field, and I am certainly not one, but a healthy dose is critical for professional development.

Please recognize that there is an order of magnitude difference between the potential productivity and problem solving abilities between a person well rested in their home country, with cool reasoning capabilities, access to speedy internet and software tools, minimal bugs, air conditioning, and a healthy set of meals. Versus the overtaxed field engineer that is doing the best they can with what they have, but who may be greatly impaired through no fault of their own.

Sometimes this gets overlooked when there are too many irons in the fire. You hope that people “out there” can handle everything themselves (nominally that is their assignment, after all), but the value of your potential home office support can be so magnified by your superior environment versus their challenging one, you really need to offer it regardless of your other distractions.

Today I violated that principle to my immediate horror, since in the past I’ve been so appreciative when people have bailed me out when I’ve had very tough circumstances in the field. Never again. Tell your other tasks to take a number, if there’s a startup engineer on a crackly internet connection trying to sort out a rough running pump, with millions on the line. Support your people in the field!