Whether engineers work for a manager as employees or are retained as consultants they will need to understand the manager's function and some of the principal problems in order to be effectively and professionally supportive. This chapter is intended, not as a treatise on engineering management, but rather as an orientation in the manager's function for those who will be managed.

Management, of course, is primarily a matter of getting a job done through the efforts of others. We saw in Chapter 14 the relation between a project engineer and the unit manager. Figure 14-1 relates both these engineers to the engineering enterprise as a whole. Of course the unit manager is ultimately responsible for all the work in the unit. The unit manager normally delegates authority for the day-to-day direction of projects and focuses individually on the longer-range work for the entire unit. The unit manager is directly responsible for all the project work, however, and must guide and support the project engineers as required.

Project Engineer Works in the Present

A useful way to differentiate between the work of project engineers and unit managers is in terms of the time span of their principal responsibilities. The project engineer's effort can hardly afford to stray very far beyond the project. Of course the project engineer has all the normal concerns of any engineer and will take a strong interest in the progress of the unit and the company as a whole. But essentially all effort and time will be...