During the last 3-4 decades Business Management courses have become preferred choice of all students, including from engineering streams. Students graduating from such courses end up as Finance, Economics, Marketing or Human Resources managers or executives. Very few become technocrats dealing with high technology situations. This article examines the issues.

1. ENGINEERING PROJECT
MANAGEMENT
Post 601 –by Gautam Shah
In ancient age, endeavours like: survival, hunting, farming, communal
living, communication, wars, and mitigation of calamities or disasters,
required some degree of skilled handling. Endeavours that are
unprecedented in nature or first time ever required group action,
innovation and commitment. These qualities were fundamental
requirements for handling a complex situation. Over a period, many
of these activities become routine, and so could be handled by
smaller groups, or within the family, and without any distinctive
expertise.
Figure 1- Street in Pompeii > Wikipedia image by Paul Vlaar
Wars, disasters’ mitigation and ambitious projects were
governments’ forte and handled by a coterie of disciplined experts.

2. These endeavours required
new technologies, faster
completion and assured
results. Such experts were
available with the military,
and since then technical
management has been part
of the military’s domain. For
many autocratic nations
the fact holds true even
today. In most of the
countries nascent efforts in
space, communications,
electronics, transport,
marine engineering and
similar fields are initiated
or sponsored through the
military establishments.
Such devolution of project handling has created perception that
construction affairs of the Government are either military affairs
or civil matters (non-military or routine affairs), and it is still
continuing.
The Military affairs versus the Civil matters also divide the ambit
of management skills into two distinct streams: Administrative-
management and Technical-management. Things or happenings that
involve Routine tasks, even if complex, are handled by the
Administrators. Administrators are adapt at managing predictable
situations like tax collection, governance, law administration, logistics,
building or road construction, etc. Technical-management is required
for high risk situations of political and climatic nature. These are
unpredictable and unprecedented in scale, extensive in affectation,
complexity and urgency. The technical management involves three
crunching factors: Time, Extent and Resources. Situations handled by
techno-experts are, input of knowledge without experimental
Figure 2 - Poulnabrone portal tomb Ireland > Wikipedia
image by Jon Sullivan (PD Photo.org)

3. reliance, successful solutions at the first attempt, involution of diverse
conditions, lack of immediate know-hoe, lack of intermediate testing.
Civil matters require an input of technology that is with well-
established norms and unlikely to see any rapid obsolescence. On the
other hand military efforts are occurring with extreme constraints
of Time, Space and Resources. And these three elements change
their scale during planning, execution and operations requiring tactical
corrections. The Tactical corrections, require on the spot decisions,
improvisation and strategic insight. The resources’ crunch was not
acute due to the exigency of the situation and political sponsorship,
but time and space were omnipresent. Military affairs require an
unique Engineering Contribution.
Figure 3- Building Bridges Wikipedia image by US Army
Figure 4-Mexican army response to Hurricane Katrina > Wikipedia image by US Army

4. Technical or military engagement for projects was part of all
societies at all times, but early 19th
C. saw a different variety of
projects emerging. Industrial production units were not planned by
political coterie or the civil administrators, but rather rich merchants
and entrepreneurs. Industrial projects were conceived, executed
and made operational in a very compact time frame in comparison
to any other project in the history. The time-compression
necessitated new methods of project management.
World War-I and conflicts of that era were spread over very large
area, fought in unfamiliar territories, using very heavy equipment and
large number of combatants. These necessitated mathematically
based planning and forecasting methods, to anticipate the demand,
production schedules, and material procurement locations (for food,
water and fodder) and coordinating the logistics of supplies at right
place on right time. These were mainly military room affairs. The
methods developed into a new discipline concerned with the
planning, assessment and control of operating systems, such as
industrial production, commerce, or virtually any human effort, later
known as OR -Operations Research. Interest in the methods for
design and logic of these systems, rather than in their operations, led
to another subject, SE -Systems Engineering.
Figure 5-Factory Brazil 1880 Wikipedia image

5. In today’s world ‘Management has come to mean many things to
many people’. Broadly three classes of management are
recognized: Governmental, Business and Engineering.
■ In Governmental management, administration, legal frame
work and intendance of wealth, predominate. This is reflected
in Civil Services that Governments form through selection,
training and situational exposure.
■ In Business management, public relations, communication,
material and human resource planning, strategy and
methodology, economics and financial management, market
management, are dealt. These are seen in Business managers
that trade and industry inculcate within their personnel or
through specialized educational courses.
Figure 6-Logistic issues during WW -I > Wikipedia image

6. ■ In Engineering management, all pioneering human
endeavours are planned, operated and serviced with infusion
of technology. Engineering management, however, requires a
competence that is substantially different from business
management. Designers and Engineers, who have had several
years of varied working experience, gain circumstantial
administrative and business management skills, but very late in
a carrier. Fresh students of Design and Engineering branches,
who go through advanced courses in business management,
lack the multi-engineering disciplinary exposure.
To manage a business commercially or any non-business
organization administratively, business management training or
exposure may be adequate. Substantial technical contribution is
necessary for conception of complex entities, design, implementation,
production, operations, and servicing of engineering projects, systems,
gadgets and components, resource planning, material procurement,
environmental engineering, quality control, preparation of
specifications, standardization and procedural documentation, some
different sets of skills are necessary.
Figure 7-Dabbawala of Mumbai India (Tiffin -lunch box delivery men) Routine Management >
Wikipedia image by Zachs from Pune India

7. Engineering management skills are necessary when:
1. An activity is required to be accomplished in a shortest time
frame.
2. An activity spreads out over a vast terrain, and over which
physical control is diffused.
3. An activity is so critical that its non-accomplishment or
inadequate performance could result into a grave risk, fatalistic
hazard or substantial disadvantage.
4. An activity is unprecedented in nature.
5. An activity involves such risks that its management or
compensations are difficult to handle.
6. An activity is such that its full comprehension cannot be made
till full size tests or actual enactment takes place.
Figure 8-A High Technology situation > Wikipedia image by Siemens Pressebild

8. 7. An activity may have to be carried out in spite of resources
shortage.
Engineering-management plays many different roles. Primarily, it
helps in efficient infusion of technology in various types of
situations. It is true that in fields where the technology has been
sufficiently ingrained and conditions are predictable, non-
engineering experts can manage or administer the situation.
Engineering management is than required to provide the `technical’
advice and solution, or interpret the `technical’ feedback to the
administrator or manager. High technology situations arise in many
areas of government and business. Most high technology situations
require a coordinated working of several different technologies
to generate a new level of specialization.
Figure 9-Russian Soyuz Space craft > Wikipedia image by NASA

9. Who is an Engineering Management expert? To handle a high
technology situation, a person who is a broad-based technologist
capable of understanding and integrating several technological
disciplines is required. Such a person will also have imbibed
circumstantial administrative or business management skills.
Fresh engineering and design graduates have no such education,
skill or experience to handle a situation that calls for coordinated
Figure 10-Sagrada Familia roof in Construction > Wikipedia image by Etan J. Tal er a caption
Figure 11-Spot Welding Robots > Wikipedia image by BMW Werk Leipzig

10. working of several different technologies. Even where they have had
a multi-disciplinary exposure through an apprenticeship, have no
capacity to comprehend the job, plan a setup for it, to recognize and
assign tasks, to monitor the task performance, to develop new
specialization or equip the organization for complex tasks.
Students from Design and Engineering have some basic skills of
creating and interpreting (‘reading’) technical drawings, and
specifications. They have fairly good knowledge of Materials’
sciences, basics of building technologies, logistics of execution
processes, integrated working of ‘men, machines, materials and
money’. Techno-students today form substantial number entrants
for post graduate level Business Management Course, but ultimately
end up for top positions in Financial, Economics, Marketing or Human
Resources fields. Very few Business management students become
entrepreneurs.
There is a distinct need to develop an Engineering Management
stream at Post Graduate level. Graduate students from Design
fields (Architecture, Interior Design, Product Design, Fashion Design
etc.) and Engineering branches (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical,
Electronics, Instrumentation etc.) are cumulatively exposed to
assimilated working of several disciplines (Conception, Project
formation, Detailing, Implementation processes and Operational
Figure 12-Inter-disciplinary approach > Wikipedia image

11. parameters). The students can be exposed to identity and
requirements of various stack-holders, societal concerns, legal and
other responsibilities. To be an entrepreneur or a self-reliant
handler of techno-projects core knowledge of business operations
such as, financing means, norms of economics (investment, return,
depreciation), productivity is required.
.