I wish I could tell you, “I was born with a slide-ruler, a calculator, and a T square in my crib — Engineering was in my blood and it was my north star since my first breath…”, but it wasn’t.
Like many others, I fell into it. I was scared of blood, so I couldn’t be a doctor. Others told me my simple and straightforward personality wouldn’t be the best fit for business or politics. Law and accounting were never in my future. Many of my cousins were engineers when I was in high school, and they were great people, so I thought engineering would be a good way to make an honest living with honest work.
The first third of my career was in the trenches. I was the engineer in charge of designing, calculating, drafting, specifying, inspecting, approving, commissioning, and sometimes conversing in “heated” discussions, no pun intended, surrounding all aspects of HVAC. I was also the MEP lead. This rigorously hands-on period of my career was foundational in developing building knowledge, but young engineers seem to have less patience to go through similar experiences today.
The second third of my career tested my "family first" priority as it entailed a lot of traveling while bringing up 3 kids. I covered all the continents except Antarctica. The longest duration project was Burj Khalifa, the tallest human-made structure (as of Sept 29, 2024), which I worked on full time for almost 6 years as the MEP design lead. Oftentimes, I will be doing international evening conference calls while helping my kids with their homeworks by putting my mic on “mute”.
This current third of my career has opened my eyes to the vital importance of engineers taking leadership. With the global population soon reaching 10 billion people and the rapidly growing" strain on the built and natural environment, engineers are the natural leaders uniquely positioned to minimize entropy. Engineers can dream big dreams but with their feets planted on solid ground to realize them. Some change the world by top down policies, others change it by bottom up grassroot impacts. Design engineers change the world by creating better “sandboxes” to transform the way we live, work, and play. We need more engineers to create these heavenly “sandboxes”. Are you ready to join or continue to follow the star?