Heriot-Watt University

Stage 1, 2020-21

Chemical Engineering

Topic 8: Professionalism Competences

B47AE

Author: Ahmad Darkazally

During my 10th year of high school, I gradually started getting more and more
interested into engineering, science, and the general nature of how physics
works around the world. Luckily for me my dad worked at an international
hotel business and one of their branches was located near my house.
consequently, when “Work experience day” came up (organized by my school)
i decided to apply for a 1-day employment at the hotel and take notes on all
the different working sectors and facilities, including the electrical sector,
amenities sector, processing and computing sector. The electrical and
processing sector was more of what I was interested and looking forward to as
I had a strong passion for any science related topic and general mathematics,
thus my task that day was to learn how to operate all the engineering related
facilities in the hotel.

My expertise and insight from this experience increased and widely developed
as I had a chance to take a look at how the electrical engineers performed and
how they operate all the facilities around the area in such a consistent manner
with extensive knowledge and skill on what they’re working on. In specific
terms, I first had a talk with one of the electrical engineers that works at the
company and talked me through the facilities and what he operates
throughout his day at work. One of the amenities that I took notes from where
the DEWA outlets (water and electricity), showing me what he must examine
daily before his shift and test if everything is operating perfectly fine. This
illustrates to me how important an engineer is in terms of having machines and
mechanics related facilities running in the company, including the fact that it is
not easy to become a certified electrical engineer, especially in The Middle
East. On the other hand, the computing side of the day included a computer
engineer that was responsible for all the hotel server loads and their online
data storage. The fact that this is an international hotel business, their online
storage was expected to be gigantic in comparison to household devices like
the mobile phone or a laptop which could never reach the capacity of an
international business specification. This engineers job to clarify that all data us
safely being stored with no mishaps of loss of information or data across all the
branches, including money transfers and reservations with the details of the
customer. What I comprehended and noted after talking to this computer
engineer is that any software related work is very challenging compared to the
majority of the other jobs in the company; as any minor miscalculation or
blunder can lead the company to very problematic situations that could cause
issues for the company. To conclude, this gave a clear impression of how a
professional working engineer should be keeping his mind on constantly and
how he should be operating around hid working facilities.
The main concepts of the machines and sources of energy are all equivalent in
terms of how they are utilising and are designed to operate. A key illustration
are the data storage operators and the DEWA facilities, they both can be
demonstrated equivalently as both require attention paid towards their
statuses and how efficiently they’re running. In addition to that, a professional
working engineer should constantly look for opportunities and have an
effective responsibility to fix any defects around any of the projects. For
instance, the electrical engineer should continuously be looking for any faults
in the readings of any of the water, electricity, gas, etc. this requires engineers
to have an appropriate amount of knowledge and skill to be able to conduct
investigations and research on how to develop certain things according to their
following issue effectively. One of the most common things both the electrical
and computer engineers did was that they compared readings/data to the
previous day, week, month and also year; this is so they would be able to
notice any unusual sporadic change in numbers so that they can warn the
company and begin developing a research task on how to resolve the matter.
Conveniently, the day I was employed at the hotel there was a sudden power
outage where the new employers weren’t able to fix on their own, therefore
the electrical engineer that was showing me how the machines operate had to
go and resolve the issue. He decided to check the timings of when the outage
occurred and to check the amount of electricity being used just before the
outage, which allowed him to be able to evaluate on how to resolve the issue
quickly and efficiently. To add to my point, most electrical engineers have to be
quick-thinking and not slow when it comes to instant matters like so, due to
most companies like hotels constantly having customers in use of their service.
The design and development of processes, systems, services and products of
this work area gave me a slight background knowledge on how research and
design would be crucial in terms of an engineers life, meaning that being able
to know what outcomes can be just based off your evaluation is a vital skill
every professional engineer should acquire throughout their work life.
Evidently a professionally working engineer can’t work alone, especially in big
corporations in an affluent and tremendously competing country like the UAE.
Furthermore, the engineer was employed due to his excessive ability to be
able to have a successful plan with and effective execution for significant and
major engineering projects. A great illustration of such is that the engineers at
this hotel have been working on an international project that is managed by
hundreds of engineers across all of their branches worldwide. This leads me to
my next point of the importance of management and how leadership is a
major dexterity. In this example, the main person that is leading the group of
engineers in the project has key headship skills as managing hundreds of
intelligent professional engineers is not an easy task. This is due to the
responsibility of this person all depends on how he executes his organisation
around the project, directing specific people into certain operations and
controlling the project in terms of stability and consistency. What I am
connotating from this point is that stability and control all depends on many
other factors like budgeting, resource management and scheduling about the
project in effective manners. In addition to that, the fact that he is managing
employees around the globe (not just in person), he needs adapt to being able
to apply change and effective manoeuvres across all branches. This includes
leading teams based off their procedural specializations and assist others to
meet for their managerial requirements. To conclude this point, manoeuvring
across all branches and making quality checks for any improvements will be
pretty tough, especially during times like a global pandemic. Therefore, he will
be obliged to promote quality enhancements across the areas that require any
developments, which completes the reasoning to why and how a professional
engineer’s best quality should be effortless leadership and management. This
allowed me to understand how crucial it is to be able to have the set of skills of
easily working in group projects, as one mishap of a member can cause a
snowball effect and slowly degrade the group’s standards, and also knowing
how to plan your studies and work in terms of the required deadlines.
Operating across many countries and cultures will most certainly require
decent social and communitive skills with all of the other employees. Especially
in places like the UAE, respectable communicating and societal skills will be
needed to be acquired before hand as the majority of the citizens in many
countries don’t just speak English, but speak and variety of languages which
could count up to hundreds of different ethnic backgrounds. Therefore, being
able to communicate with others at all levels would be crucial in scenarios like
these. To add to my point, due to the variety of communitive skills, clear
presentation and understandable proposals and justifications are needed to be
visibly understood by all people included in the project, or else slight mishaps
of not comprehending certain points can lead to major issues afterwards.
However, in specific cases where the person does hasn’t met the required
amount of social skills needed to adapt to the groups, they have to establish
their personal issues of diversity and awareness of their own social abilities not
being able to blend into the group’s social skills. This point illustrates to me
how important it will be to be able to explain projects to fellow lecturers,
evaluate and comprehend other reports and information to use in your
assignments, working on projects in labs and/or in groups which requires
engagement and discussions with fellow students and evaluations about the
group. This could be crucial later on if you end up looking for
internships/employment applications as social abilities are one of the top vital
skill sets companies seek for in a person
My passion and aim for the future is all concentrated onto science and maths,
therefore I had to take this chance of being employed for a day seriously and
commit to as much effort as I can throughout the learning stages of the
employment and demonstrations of the environment. This includes me taking
precise and knowledgeable notes on what I’m being illustrated on, and
emphasis every detail that I’m being taught about the operators. To add to my
point, having to conform and comprehend certain techniques and procedures
is essential towards my learning process. It is considered essential due to all
this information that you are being educated on will benefit you extensively
later on in your working stages, as you will need to be able to apply them in
your work. Almost every professionally working engineer has responsibilities
included in their major role, in an ethical approach. Therefore, you will need to
ask and exteriorly attempt to educate yourself even if your role
models/lecturers didn’t approach you about this specific knowledge. All of this
precedes to how you should be manoeuvring within your university guidelines
and policies, for example abiding the safety rules in labs. Another crucial
example is eventually getting to the point of understanding how to participate
in societies in professional manners like chemistry events or mathematics
competitions.

A few of the most key ideas that I have interpreted during my work experience
was to experience and get a sense of how important management is, in terms
of both your work life and student life. For instance, knowing how to manage
your time in relation to your assignment due dates, etc is crucial no matter at
what stage you are in your life, especially in your professional development
periods. Another imperative point is overcoming differences in your
environment, this comprises of either studying in a different country, working
with new people in a group or having to study and learn a subject that is
blatantly new to you. Having this vital skill in your system will allow you to
adapt you change with ease.
To conclude this self-document, knowing your weak points and disadvantages
after hard work is critical and needs to be surpassed. Thus, my weak spots
were having to adapt to being subjected to new information that I haven’t
touched on or studied during high school, including the fact that it’s all taking
action rapidly and there is no time to settle down and adjust slowly as each
semester has its own essential meaning to it. This could be an issue due to
failing a semester could have a long-term affect in the upcoming semesters or
even years in university, hence I am trying to adjust and alter my way of
approaching these new lectures and education throughout my years in
university.