Changing importances of professional practice competencies over an engineering career

The profession depends on its practitioners developing management and leadership skills to achieve good client outcomes and robust, reliable products or services, delivered by profitable, ethically run engineering businesses. The difficulty is determining what those skills are, and where in the career they are needed. The New Zealand population of professional engineers was surveyed to rate the importance of a list of management and leadership topics. Results show the relative importance of various topics and how their importance is perceived differently with years of experience. The results also help differentiate the roles of teaching institutions and ongoing in-career professional development.