Monday, August 25, 2008

My Annual Review - Performance Appraisal

. Monday, August 25, 2008

As I mentioned over on the Yada forum, I recently had my annual review at work. At the review, we talk about my performance of the past year and about short and long term career development goals.

There were three other people at my review - one Principal In Charge (PIC), the vice president of engineering (VP), and the studio leader for the mechanical department (SL). Even though VP is the person I generally consider to be my "boss", SL was the one that led the review.

As most of you know, I'm a mechanical engineer for an architectural/engineering firm. I design HVAC systems for buildings. Not only design these systems, I create the drawings and write the specifications that the Contractor uses to build said systems. I can have the best design in the world, but it doesn't mean "squat" if the drawings and specs are lacking.

Besides SL, I'm the other senior mechanical engineer in the Studio. You can assign me a project, and it will be done correctly, and it will be done on time. My forte is the thoroughness and the level of detail of my drawings. Even the Evil Contractor once wrote a letter to my company president saying how great my drawings were. My projects tend to have few RFIs and even fewer PCOs. And when I do screw up (because NO ONE's drawings are EVER perfect), it's usually an "omission" and not an "error". An example of an omission would be forgetting to show a fire damper in a fire barrier. The Owner would have had to pay for that fire damper anyway. He's just having to pay a premium for it because the Evil Contractor charges a lot for my mistakes. An example of an error (and I've made a few in my career) would be specifying the wrong voltage for a piece of equipment. So the equipment has to be sent back to the factory (pay a restocking fee), order the correct equipment (at a higher price), and the project ends up getting delayed.

My other strength is my organizational skills. I pioneered and developed a "paperless project binder" that is now the SOP for the company. Because I keep everything so organized, I am better able to respond to issues when they arise. You would never know I was so organized if you looked at my desk most times.

I didn't do any jail feasibility studies over the past year, but technical writing is also a strength of mine. My writing skills are also apparent in the e-mails and MOCs that I write. That was one of the things that the PIC mentioned during my review.

SL said that my performance improved slightly compared to last year. That's a nice achievement since I consistently perform at such a high level of work. That's one neat thing I've noticed over the years. I am continuously learning and improving. Over the years, I've developed a "system" for keeping my projects organized, and it has served me very well.

Because it was well apparent that I do such a good job, the majority of the time was spent discussing my future career goals. I'll talk about how that went down in a future post.

1 comments:

It's you know who! said...

I had no doubt it was good. :)