Engineering skills with project management - agency type?

[Karyn]

Hi all,


Opinions (and possible recommendations!), if you'd be so kind...


If you were looking to fill a role (via an agency) that was project management/proposals-based, but had a heavy bias toward varying engineering disciplines (different projects; different disciplines - role would be managing multiple project proposals across disciplines), would you use an engineering-based agency and hope they have applicants with strong project management skills, or a more administrative-based agency to secure the strong projet-management skills, and just hope that they have some engineering bias?

I'm tempted by the former, but am wary of candidates having too much of an engineering bias in favour of the project management skills, IYSWIM?
But it still seems a better punt than going for a project-management skill-set and hoping they have some engineering background, yes?

No?

Thoughts?

[footnote]
Recommendations?! Office is Midlands-based, company is European.[/footnote]

[Gargamel]

Engineering firm first. More likely to understand the projects content.

[rog007]

Many engineers develop project management skills through their work. Many non-engineers will have top-drawer PM competences. The answer I would proffer lies within your requirement paper; describe what the outputs are and weight them against PM or engineering core competences and you should have your answer. Finding said individual may be another issue, but you have to know what you want to know what to look for, and only you know that. Good luck!

[Karyn]

Thanks for the responses so far.

My conundrum stems from the fact that, on paper, the bias is obviously, and quite heavily, toward PM. The role focusses on the project management of the proposal generation process - outputs and metrics are PM-based.

However, proposals cannot be generated without a thorough understanding of the project detail for which the proposal is being created; therein lies the conundrum - the projects are all engineering based, and require a good, thorough grounding of (first principles) et al.

I suppose standard PM-core agencies should have candidates with engineering skills...

I'm just wary that choosing a PM-based agency might not offer candidates with the right level of engineering competencies, given as it's not a pre-requisite to be on their books.

Whereas an engineering agency would no doubt have the right calibre of candidate, but you run the converse risk of them not having qualified/quantified PM skills. More "on the job" skills.


/thinkingaboutittoomuch.

[rog007]

So go for one of each! Not unusual to form a team for challenging projects, nor is it unusual to find that one human does not possess every skill we would like.

[mondeoman]

Engineers make good PMs.

I graduated as an engineer, moved into internal sales (proposals and technical support for the real sales guys), then into bid management, then into engineering PM by my early 30's.

I'd say go for an engineer with PM skills - most engineers will have run projects or packages within projects, so will know how to scope them properly.

[Eng Recruiter]

Hi Karyn,

I work for a specialist engineering recruitment agency and we regularly recruit project managers for engineering companies so this is certainly a vacancy that we could support you with.

If you would like to PM me your contact details then I would be more than happy to give you a call in order to discuss.

Hope to hear from you soon.

[crazy about cars]

Wow, I've noticed the boom of recruiters lately. Got lots of "cold calls" and emails.