“Combining a creative mindset with an engineering mindset will ensure you provide your clients with the best possible service.” – Luis Duque, PE
In this episode, I interviewed Luis Duque, PE, M. ASCE, SEI, a Bridge Engineer at Foothills Bridge Co, and host of the podcast called Engineering Our Future, and we talked about the importance of establishing a creative outlet outside of engineering, and how entrepreneurship and volunteering can help you to advance in your career.
Here Are Some of the Key Points Discussed About How Engineers Can Find a Creative Outlet:
- It is important to understand and determine what you are passionate about and to then find the systems that will support your passion project.
- The more free time one has, the easier it is to fill it with unnecessary things, therefore it is important to set aside time that you can work on your passion project.
- As engineers, we need to be good at math and understand the technical aspects of all things we do, however, there is always a phase in most projects where we need to brainstorm and come up with creative solutions to problems. Combining a creative mindset with an engineering mindset will ensure you provide your clients with the best possible service.
- Younger engineers starting out in their careers, typically use an engineering and scientific mindset to solve problems. However, it is important to remember that curiosity, having an open mind, skepticism and humility needs to be present in everything you do.
- Volunteering while in college was one of the best things I could’ve done because it helped me to practice some of the things that I wasn’t taught in class.
- Networking and reaching out to engineers with more experience than you, learning from their mistakes and experiences, and applying it to your job is something that you can’t do with just sitting in an office. Building these supporting skills will ultimately help you as you grow in your engineering career.
- As engineers, we play an important role in society in terms of helping others live an easier life, as well as looking out for the future, and vouching for the welfare of society.