Decision-Making in an Engineering Environment
Course Info
Code IND04-116
Duration 5 Days
Format Classroom
Course Summary
Within the engineering industry, there are a vast amount of factors that can influence tasks and projects. To ensure productivity is not impacted, or only impacted to a minimum, it is crucial for management and employees to have a strong understanding of decision-making.
When it comes to project management, there is a heavy focus on the process of planning, risk management, and monitoring results. Risk management allows those in charge to predict and prepare for potential mistakes or influential factors that could affect productivity. There needs to be a rationality of decisions, and hence the vitality of developing the skills for effective decision making.
Decision-making may seem like an easy task, but it’s not always the case. Making careful and promising decisions in situations of immense pressure is a skill that must be nurtured and improved. Someone must also be willing to take criticism and advice from others, be able to reflect on previous instances of decisions, and use that knowledge to further improve.
Effective monitoring and measuring of performance throughout projects are important factors in decision-making. It allows those involved to analyse the influences of decisions as they happen and provides great material to evaluate once the project is complete.
- To understand the importance of decision-making in engineering projects.
- To assess key strategic techniques for quick decision-making.
- To effectively explain and justify decisions to employees and superiors.
- To identify how decision-making and project management are intertwined.
- To develop viable project management solutions based on rational analysis and decision-making methods.
- To improve the quality of business functions through innovation, analysis, critical thinking, and risk assessment.
- To advance the skills relating to project initiation, planning, and control.
- To apply important qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques to typical project situations.
This course is designed for anyone within the engineering industry who wishes to develop their competency in decision-making. It would be most beneficial for:
- Finance Managers
- Internal Auditors
- Engineering Project Managers
- Chief Engineering Officers (CEOs)
- Engineering Managers
- Project Engineers
- Engineering Directors
This course uses a variety of adult learning styles to aid full understanding and comprehension. Participants will review case studies of completed projects to highlight areas of importance and where smart decision-making has influenced the result.
They will be provided with all the necessary tools to carry out the learning exercises. Alongside this, participants will partake in group discussions, group activities, and presentations to further develop their knowledge of the topics. They will have the opportunity to establish their own project plans in relation to their respective roles, identify risks associated and use decision-making skills to create solutions for these.
Course Content & Outline
- Defining what decision analysis is.
- The internal and external factors that influence the decision-making process.
- Strategic, corporate, operational, and personal decisions.
- Understanding why project management is important.
- Common problems faced within the engineering industry, particularly with engineering projects.
- How effective decision-making resolves these problems.
- The project lifestyle and project management processes.
- Project selection, classification, and option analysis.
- Identifying business needs and industry standards.
- Reviewing project requirements.
- Determining goals, objectives, priorities, and restrictions.
- Utilising risk assessment methods to analyse the associated risks.
- Establishing risk management.
- Using analytical tools to balance certainty and risks – payoff tables and decision trees.
- Developing a project work breakdown structure.
- Establishing a logical progression of work.
- Estimating task durations and budgeting.
- Delegating tasks accordingly.
- Quantitative analysis techniques.
- Resource scheduling and budgeting.
- Preparing for project execution and communicating plans effectively.
- Utilising decision-making techniques to address problems as they arise.
- Negating problems and issues before productivity is heavily impacted.
- Earned Value Analysis.
- Successful project completion and hand-over
- Assessing benefit realisation.
- Reflecting on issues and the steps taken to resolve them.
- Analysing decisions made and how they influenced productivity.
- Creating personal and team improvement plans for future projects.
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