Blog - Page 2 of 4 - Brian Wagner

Engage and Empower Staff while Improving your Systems

6 steps of a Project Debriefing

The 6 steps of a Project Debrief are purposefully designed to help the team members share their experiences, challenges, and emotions. Through factual discussion and the sharing of different perspectives, the program is intended to identify and resolve issues while recognizing and acknowledging successes. A willingness to adapt and improve your systems is vital. A willingness to engage and empower your staff to improve opens doors of opportunity.

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Quality Management

What is the difference between Quality Assurance and Control?

Often the terminology of engineering professionals can be highly technical and confusing. The use of terms like “Quality Assurance” and “Quality Control” is not overly technical. However, misuse can lead to serious impacts on efficient communication and the conveyance of expectations. Clarifying the terms you use is important both in-house and in your relationship with clients.

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Leadership

How Span of Control Impacts the Quality of Work

Span of Control is a concept that I learned in my emergency services training both in the fire service and law enforcement corrections. Yet this topic is not something I read or hear about often, if ever, in the engineering community. The idea behind this concept is based on how many people a leader can effectively manage in a given scenario. In the emergency services world, this normally works best in the range of 2 to 5 people. In the business world, this range may extend upwards to 10 subordinates to one leader. There are a lot of factors that go into determining how many subordinates one leader can effectively manage. Each and every situation will be different.

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Leadership / Quality Management

Leverage Your Quality System to Combat Burnout

I was concerned about where the civil engineering industry in March 2020 as shutdowns and emergency directives from the government sought to limit the spread of COVID-19. My mind reverted to the housing bubble pop of 2008. I remember the lack of development engineering work that was experienced, lasting well after the initial collapse. Yet as we move toward two full years of a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 800,000 Americans*, the engineering and construction industries are strong and growing. For many, 2021 proved to be a year of challenges to deliver the work on time to clients. Keep in mind, as workload increases, so does the possibility of employee burnout.

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Leadership

4 Great Traits my Kids Remind Me to Embrace

Learning new things can be hard in itself, let alone implementing new policies and guidelines in the workplace. I have the privilege of raising two wonderful children with my wife. My oldest is 9* and she is showing what I believe is an engineering brain with her inquisitive and curious nature. My youngest is 6* and he constantly seeks our approval in both doing what is right and letting him do things to help around the house. After spending a wonderful long holiday weekend with my family, during a bit of a time of reflection, I realized four traits that my children show over and over again in their daily routines and they are things that we, as adults, can learn from. Let me describe how my kids reminded me how important perseverance, patience, asking questions, and trying are to our success in life.

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Engineering / Leadership / Quality Management

A 5 part Framework for GREAT Quality Deliverables

As a professional service firm that creates and provides clients with deliverables, you are more than just a consultant or service firm. You are more than simply an opinion, clients are paying for a product that they will use to make decisions, apply for permits, or construct from among hundreds of other possibilities. Like any purchase we make, you will certainly judge your experience. A positive experience, a GREAT Quality deliverable, will create the opportunity to bring you back for more but a negative experience will make you think twice. A poor experience is two to three times more likely to receive an angry review which would require 12 positive reviews to offset the side effects of one negative review.

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