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Management Continuing Education for Professional Engineers

October 13th, 2022

Are you like many engineers; highly trained to solve technical problems but not as confident with your people skills? There is a big difference between engineering design and business management. In the engineering profession engineers are constantly studying to stay current on the latest technologies and engineering strategies. For many engineers it is extremely difficult to transition from engineer to manager. Since business and management are not usually classes in engineering college, engineers are expected to obtain their business skills through experience and continuing education. Unless you have a MBA, you will probably find it difficult to locate qualified continuing education sources with management courses tailored for engineers.

Most of the State Licensing Boards require Professional Engineers to renew their professional licenses periodically with a minimum number of continuing education units. These units are usually Professional Development Hours (PDH) or Continuing Education Units (CEU). One PDH is equivalent to one hour of course education, and one CEU is equivalent to ten PDH or ten hours of course education. To obtain these units of continuing education the professional engineer will attend or teach the seminars, classes, or courses, write articles, or sit on professional boards or committees. The majority of engineers obtain their credits by attending conferences or seminars.

Nearly all of the states that require continuing education credits accept business or managerial courses as long as they are related to engineering. In other words you can not take a class in “How to start your own Retail Business” and expect to receive continuing education credit for renewing your professional engineering license. But you can take a course in “Engineering Business Marketing Techniques” and receive full credit.

In addition, most State Licensure Boards do not pre-approve courses for continuing education credit. This responsibility is usually left to the engineer to understand the state codes and to screen the courses appropriately. The Board will either accept or decline the courses after the engineer has submitted the license renewal application and listed the completed and credits received.

Engineering managerial courses can include topics on Engineering Business Plan, Engineering Operations, Engineering Marketing, Financials, Proposals, Leadership, and many others. To acquire the necessary continuing education units, engineers can find these courses in the following sources;

Community College and University Continuing Education Courses – These institutions regularly offer courses on numerous topics. Since the courses have to appeal to a wide audience, they usually do not cover technical topics that would be of interest to engineers. You can find business topics, but these courses are very general. Management courses that can apply to engineers my have words like “professional services” and “technical industry” in the course title.

Vendor Seminar (Lunch Presentation) – This has been one my favorite sources. It usually starts by a product vendor giving you a call. He will ask if you would be interested in a presentation at your office. If you are interested you may say “Yes, but I will need for the presentation to be made at my office during lunch our hour. The attendees will be my engineers and designers, and I will need for you to bring lunch.” Your team will listen to the vendor’s presentation, review his products and literature, ask technical questions, and enjoy lunch. Each of your Professional Engineers gains about 0.5 PDH.

On-the-Job Training – Some firms actually have monthly training sessions for their engineers and support staff. The subjects can be on a wide array of technical, ethical, and managerial topics. As long as the subject covered, who made the presentation, who attended the training, date of the training session, and time spent training is documented, these sessions can count as continuing education.

Seminars – These courses are often held in a hotel conference room for a few hours to several days. Usually the courses offer continuing education credit of 8 PDH per day. If you have to travel to attend the seminar, your additional expenses beyond the cost of the seminar will include lodging, air fares, rental car, and dining. A three-day course can easily exceed several thousands dollars. Also take into account that during this time you will not be working on any contracts, your company will loss billable hours.

Convention and Conferences – These events offers the attendee a multitude of course topics. Attending one four-day convention, you can easily obtain all of the continuing education credits needed to renew your professional license. Like seminars if the convention is away from your home town, you will have additional expenses including lodging, air fares, rental car, and dining. Also since you are away from your office, you will loss billable hours. Again, a convention can cost you or your office thousands of dollars.

Home Study Courses – These courses have been around for a long time; long before the computer. The course material is sent to your home. You study the material, answer the quiz, and return the quiz. A week or two later a Course Completion certificate is sent to you. These types of course are being replaced by Online Courses as discussed below.

Online Seminars – This is becoming a very popular program. Seminars that are online are often quite a bit less expensive than actually attending a seminar. Not only are the courses cheaper, but the attendee also saves due to no traveling, lodging, dining, or other expenses. Of course, the attendee will have to find a quite area to sit-up the computer and speakers, and to post a sign on the door saying “Do Not Disturb”. Once the seminar is completed you receive a Certificate of Completion with the number of PDH or CEU earned.

Online Courses – These courses are much like the home study course but everything is done over the internet. You can take the course 24/7, and you usually have instant access to the quiz and the certificate of completion. These courses are the most economical and convenient for the engineer. You can just about study any topic; technical, ethical, or managerial. Most websites tend toward the technical topics. While only a few websites specialize in the business of engineering. Since most of these courses are written by engineers, it is understandable that most of the courses are technical.

Contractor Continuing Education – Online Vs. In-Person Seminars – Which Is Better?

September 13th, 2022

More and more construction State licensing boards are requiring that the construction contractor licensees complete between five to fourteen hours of continuing education depending on the State to renew their contractor license. This fact has increased the number on online continuing education courses available to a construction contractor dramatically in the last decade. Conversely the number of courses offered in-person at live seminars has decreased in some States and counties.

Some regulatory licensing boards continue to cling incorrectly to the idea believing that continuing education seminars attended in person are superior to online or live webinars. This is not accurate. The regulatory licensing boards should concentrate on what the construction contractors are learning and less on how the licensee is exposed to the course content.

Regardless if the continuing education course is online or in-person it should be approved based on the ability to interact with the course instructor, achievement of the learning objectives in addition to a timed attendance requirement. A course should expose the construction contractor to the changes in the rules, laws and regulations in their industry. Additionally the course should increase the contractor’s professional skill set in managing their business and technical knowledge in their trade.

The increase in availability in online continuing education courses offers many advantages to the construction contractor. This includes increased access to a specific course topic not offered in their geographic area, convenience, and affordability that would not be possible with mandatory in-person attendance.

It is the mastery of the course content that increases the contractor’s knowledge, and for the contractor to be aware of the changes in the laws, rules and regulations. This yields a better product and service to the consumer public, and results in a successful business for the contractor which moves the entire construction industry forward.

Live Seminars:

The live seminar offers the following advantages: face to face communication which for some individuals works best if the class size is not too large. As spur of the moment questions can be answered quickly and the resulting dialogue will clarify any ambiguities. The contractor also has the ability to network with other contractors as there are many different construction trades in attendance. During the course breaks (coffee, smoke and restroom time) the contractor can make business connections and discuss some of the ideas offered during the lecture.

The disadvantages of a live seminar are: the seminar is typically held in a hotel or convention center with seating arrangements and/or a room temperature that is uncomfortable. The seminar is held at a fixed and limited time frame with little to no flexibility to attendee for date & time changes. The time required to commute to the seminar site frequently requires overnight travel and added expense for hotel and restaurant meals. Next when a live seminar has too many attendees it is not practical for each person to ask questions. This results in minimal to no interaction even though the course is in-person.

Online Courses:

Online courses would include both static or recorded courses and live webinars. The courses typically have an assessment tool (true/false and multiple choice quizzes or exams) and a minimum time course time log attendance to receive a certificate of completion. One of the main advantages of online courses is accessibility with a computer or smart phone. It is almost impossible today to manage a construction contracting business without the use of either of these tools. No longer is technology a barrier as it was in the past. However the contractor needs to be proficient with the use of the computer, tablet or smart phone and the associated software.

Today the choices of construction continuing education course topics are immense. The contractor can take the types of courses they need that meet their current goals. Otherwise they only can take the courses that are offered in their city or within close driving distance – as few contractors will drive across the State due to time and the cost of travel.

The contractor can complete their continuing education hours at their convenience – at the office, at home, in the coffee shop or anywhere there is internet access. With online slide presentation courses the contractor is not restricted by a fixed date or time and without spending extra money for travel, food and hotel expense. They can log on for a few minutes or a few hours – whatever their schedule allows.

In both live webinar and recorded online courses the contractor can email or text message the instructor with a question. This would be an advantage for some as they may be embarrassed thinking their question was irrelevant or not of interest to others in a typical in-person hotel seminar. The contractor can easily repeat the prior course content by going back a slide or two if they did not understand the concept without having to feel embarrassed. This is compared to only hearing it once at an in-person seminar and then having to interrupt the person sitting next to them or stop the entire class to ask a question.

The contractor attendee still has access to course handouts, graphs, tables, and other articles associated with the course with just a click of the mouse as they would in an in-person seminar.

Online learning offers the construction contractor the advantage to complete their continuing education hours in small units of time, at a fraction of the cost, easily repeat the course material, and results in a more efficient use of limited time than what an in-person seminar offers.

If your local licensing board limits the number of online continuing education hours you may complete question them as why this is. Let them know that you want to learn and complete all of your continuing education hours online to increase the choice of course topics to better serve the consumer public and for you to have a successful construction business. Continuing education is not about if the course hours are completed in-person or online but that you do learn and continually improve your skill set.

Gregory Siviur is an instructor at Florida-contractor-continuing-education.com [http://florida-c