How to Prepare For Site Work

by Pat Sweet | Jul 27, 2012 | Article, Productivity

Today, I want to share with you how to prepare for site work. When you’re ready for it, site work affords a young engineer huge growth opportunities. Showing up to site unprepared, though, is bound to be a pretty miserable time.

Site work is a critically important aspect of any young engineer’s development. There’s no better way to learn a system, product, or service than through seeing it in action. This goes for major construction projects to supporting mass production of a product, to software development and everything in between. Not only do you learn a lot from seeing the fruits of your labour, it’s actually better for your overall job satisfaction. Site work is still what I consider to be the best part of my job.

I consider site work (or field work) to be anything that takes you away from your desk, and isn’t strictly a business meeting. If you’re out on a construction site, touring a manufacturing facility, installing software on a client’s server, surveying, et cetera, I think of that as field work.

* Why You Need to Prepare

It’s critical that you prepare before you head out the back door of your office for site. Not being prepared can lead to any number of awkward situations that basically lead to you not being able to get the job done. This is bad. Especially if you work in an environment where you charge your time and mileage for travel. You don’t want to be that engineer who spends time and money to not get things done.

* How to Prepare for Site Work

When I’m asked to conduct some kind of site work, I try to make sure I understand a few key things:

-What exactly needs to be done?
– How do I do what I need to do?
– Who are the key players?
– What’s the big picture?
– Let me take each of these one at a time and flesh them out a little bit more…

* What exactly needs to be done?

You need to be able to succinctly explain what exactly you’re doing. Why are you going to site? Are you collecting data? Are you supervising a crew? What are the expectations for this trip. You need to know exactly what you’re being asked to do, and what you’re supposed to bring back from your trip. A good way to drill down to get an answer for this question is to ask what deliverables you’re responsible for, and in what format they’re required.