IPA Identifies the Attributes of Successful Lead Engineers and Builds on its Capital Projects Leadership Competency Research
Following demographic shifts in the workforce over the last decade-plus, few highly experienced lead engineers remain in the capital projects industry. Yet, the engineering function remains a critical project team function. How can owner companies recognize, recruit, and retain high-caliber engineering leadership talent to support their portfolio of projects?
A bevy of IPA-led research shows how owner companies can identify the right individuals—including experts in engineering—for critical capital project leadership roles. By identifying behaviors associated with successful projects and the attributes correlated with those behaviors, companies can increase the likelihood of project success by selecting individuals with key leadership competencies and training people to compensate for their lack of experience.
In a study presented at IPA’s Industry Benchmarking Consortium (IBC), Competency Series: The Engineering Leader, IPA’s Jon Walker, Lucas Milrod, and Yashna Shah endeavored to identify personal attributes correlated with success in the lead engineer role. The study is IPA’s fourth in a series of studies on understanding capital project leadership competencies. For this work, IPA surveyed more than 70 lead engineers across a variety of industries and project types. Surveys assessed personality, background, leadership style, and perceived important and frequent behaviors specific to the lead engineering role. Survey responses were linked to data from completed and ongoing capital projects in IPA’s database, allowing researchers to investigate correlations between competencies and project practices and outcomes. Below we highlight some of the study’s findings.
Is there a particular leadership style best suited to success in the lead engineer role?
The study investigated four different leadership styles and the links between these styles and behaviors associated with project outcomes. Of the four leadership styles studied, three were linked to some behaviors that improved outcomes. For instance, the supportive leadership style was linked to performing tasks associated with better project outcomes. Engineers exhibiting a supportive leadership style tend to place importance on people management skills and spend more time communicating. Such leadership styles are linked to better integrated teams and better engineering definition.
What types of experiences are important to success in the lead engineer role?
As expected, the study found that prior experience in the lead engineer role was linked to critical behaviors associated with improved Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). However, the study went a bit further and highlighted what experienced lead engineers actually do differently. As such, lead engineers with more experience spent less time on detail-oriented tasks and attending review meetings. It is likely that, in the course of their time in the lead engineer role, these individuals gain an understating of behaviors and tasks essential to a successful project and recognize that their time is best spent leading and managing the engineering function, not doing the actual engineering.
What personality traits are important to lead engineer success?
Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—commonly referred to as the Big 5 personality traits—are thought to guide our actions and behaviors. While IPA’s researchers were unable to statistically test the effect of openness and conscientiousness due to the lack of adequate variance in the study sample, the three other traits were found to be linked to behaviors associated with KPIs. Personality traits work in tandem with each other, as well as other personal attributes, to influence our behavior. Neuroticism, extraversion, and site-based experience all influence the lead engineer’s approach to contractor management. The researchers observed that when lead engineers spent sufficient time on contractor management, their project had fewer project late changes, less materials cost growth, and a higher likelihood of meeting the engineering schedule, all of which are critical to a project’s success.
Should lead engineers focus on engineering tasks or managing their team?
All in all, engineering leaders who did not think it was important for them to engage in the engineering team’s tasks and instead let the engineering team do their work were associated with projects with better Front-End Loading ratings. This supports IPA’s belief that the lead engineer role is fundamentally different from that of an engineer. The lead engineer needs to focus on managing their team and communicating and interfacing with others, rather than spend time creating or working on the engineering deliverables.
The above takeaways are just some findings from IPA’s latest leadership competency study. Previous studies have examined the individual attributes that support success as a project manager, construction manager, and a leader of complex projects. Findings from the series demonstrate the need for talent management processes to account for other attributes that can complement an individual’s performance on capital projects. Assessing leadership styles and personality allows us to understand the behaviors these individuals are likely to engage in and target behaviors associated with negative outcomes through robust training programs. Accounting for these competencies in staffing can aid in selecting engineering leaders likely to succeed in their role and may buffer the effects of a loss of experience and expertise in the workforce.
IPA would like to thank all companies and lead engineers who participated in the study. Their willingness to provide IPA with detailed information about themselves made it possible to quantitatively link individual characteristics with performance.
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*IPA Organizations & Teams Product Development Leader Sarah Sparks, Deputy Director of Research Lucas Milrod, and Senior Research Analyst Jon Walker contributed to this report.