As a professional in the Architectural, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry, the reliance on practical and technical know-how is a must and cannot be negotiated. The field centres around what solutions those practising can create, develop, and proffer, using a combination of acquired capabilities and theories.
Asides from the necessary hard skills needed by experts who make up the industry, incorporation of the several soft abilities are also important and must be harnessed or acquired by such individuals, which are specifically important to make them better equipped to handle the nature of their jobs.
Generally, these soft skills are human qualities which when mastered correctly, allows a person to function on a job and relate properly with other individuals, efficiently – at home and work. These skills include being able to properly interface and work alongside other parties to achieve a common goal – in a work environment this would be referred to as team settings, while also being able to take responsibility in the capacity of a leader – these, embodies leadership, teamwork, and interpersonal relations, also, being able to adequately pass information across to the correct understanding of the other party – communication abilities, the ability to not only think outside of a box but to think without the box – creativity, the ability to think fast and act fast especially when it comes to situations that require proffering solutions, amongst others.
Narrowing our focus to the engineering discipline certain soft skills are pre-requisite to having a balanced output on-site, workshops, and the garage. For an engineering practitioner, having qualities such as these can make the difference between a good engineer and a great one. To some, it might seem irrelevant as having a degree and a very good one at that should be sufficient to thrive in the industry but it should not be the case and that is not necessarily the true situation of things. No field or industry is isolated from the outside world or the society, to whatever degree there is a link to other people. To deal with clients, these traits come in handy.
As a civil engineer for example, while handling a built or construction project, dealing with a busload of people is part of the package which means that misunderstandings are bound to occur, difficult people would test your patience, deadlines might not be met, and emotions are more likely to run wild. More specifically, for situations like these, emotional intelligence, adaptability, communication, and interpersonal relations skills are all needed by everyone working on the team, if the plan is to complete and deliver that project.
For the mechanical and electrical engineers, spending long hours in the workshop to complete and deliver products could result in a lack of adequate sleep and invariably irritability to mistakes made by fellow workers or even artisans. Soft skills such as the ability to properly allocate time can play a crucial role when it comes to handling such matters of fast approaching multiple deadlines, an overload of the task, and balancing your work and life.
Many professionals lack adequate measures of these skills and it is even more unfortunate that these professionals are oblivious to their shortcomings in the area of soft traits. It is not enough to be able to create relationship and networks, how one functions in them says a lot about how much emotional intelligence, communication, active listening, and empathy abilities we possess. It is not enough to have a good grasp of theories and practice of a field, if one is unable to translate that into good performance simply because one cannot function optimally in team settings, for instance. We all need to hone these soft skills either by using self-help materials or by attending training that has these as their focus.
