MANAGING CONTROL-SYSTEMS ENGINEERS IN AN ENGINEERING CONTRACTOR ENVIRONMENT

This paper deals with the challenges that relate to management of a la rge, diverse group of control systems engineers in a multinational eng ineering contractor environment. The challenges include maintaining a high skill level across the wide range of expertise areas required in this discipline, providing technical challenges and opportunities, and at the same time providing the proper mix of skills for the execution of projects in a task force environment. Adding to the problems are t he need to execute projects in a wide variety of unrelated industries, the ever-present need in our discipline to keep up with rapidly chang ing technology, and the cyclic nature of the economic environment. Thi s paper describes approaches to these problems within a major engineer ing contractor firm.