Cultivating Curiosity and Engineering Judgment: Designing With a People-Centric Focus – Ep 038

In this episode, we talk to Erin Sibley, Ph.D., P.E., a Geotechnical and Tunnel Engineer from Mott MacDonald about the importance of cultivating curiosity and engineering judgment as a geo-professional. She also touches on earthquake and tunnel engineering and how it ties into non-technical elements such as the people-centric focus of engineering, building professional relationships, and life-long learning. Engineering Quotes: Here Are Some of the Questions We Ask Erin: How does a young geo-professional develop their "engineering judgment"? How can fostering an attitude of curiosity and being intentional about continuing to cultivate your skills of engineering judgment help with innovation and growth in your engineering career? In earthquake and tunnel engineering, how can one go about designing it with a people-centric focus? Can you tell us more about one of the tunnel projects you have worked on and how it has benefited your engineering career? What can engineers do to continually grow their professional relationships? What is the importance of lifelong learning for engineering professionals? What final piece of advice would you like to give engineers out there? Here Are Some of the Key Points Discussed About Cultivating Curiosity and Engineering Judgement: Designing With a People-Centric Focus: Young geo-professionals can develop their engineering judgment by having an attitude of curiosity. Being curious allows you to view things and others more objectively, ask good questions, and open yourself to learning about things you don’t know and the people around you. You are also more open about making mistakes and learning from your mistakes. The more you understand your limits, the better you will understand yourself, the people around you, and your challenges, the more you will cultivate a sense of engineering judgment. If you are fostering an attitude of curiosity, having a healthy respect for surprises should be important in your career. Encourage yourself to explore other options continuously. Cultivating engineering judgment can help with innovation and growth in your engineering career. Focus on understanding yourself as an engineer. Find what opportunities will help you to pursue the vision of engineering that you want for yourself. To design earthquake and tunnel engineering designs with a people-centric focus, you must work alongside engineers and non-engineers to create something that will impact people's everyday lives for the better. In an earthquake, you must see how your designs will affect the people they serve. Many professionals with diverse skillsets work on the designs and many key stakeholders are also involved. In tunnel design, the impact it will have on the community is vitally important. It makes the risk register to be considered as a living document. It is prepared to look at many aspects of the project and not only the technical part. During the construction or completion of the project, the risk register is continually revisited to ensure that the risks have been mitigated, where some of the risks manifested, and where things can be done differently in the future. Working on major tunnel projects can benefit your career because you learn how the connections work between the phases. The phases include field investigations, engineering design perimeters, the model, design implementation in terms of the contract documents, baseline reports, specifications, and writing the risk document. It will help you to understand why documentation is vitally important and pay attention to the small details. When growing your professional relationships, you must look both inside and outside the organization. Do not be afraid of re-evaluating your commitments to ensure you have sufficient bandwidth to do good work,