Engineering Professional Programs

Course Faculty: Loretta Hall

A professional’s need to communicate effectively begins with the morning’s first e-mail and ends with the last phone call of the day. It may even extend into the evening if a public meeting is scheduled. The engineering professional must routinely produce written documents ranging from short letters to lengthy reports, crafting them appropriately for a variety of readers including concerned citizens, politicians, reporters, other engineers, and contractors. Poorly planned or ineffectively written documents can result in confusion, wasted time, improper action, and lawsuits.

This two-day course will enhance your professional effectiveness by improving your technical communication skills. Understanding the planning, writing, and reviewing processes will increase your efficiency, allowing you to produce more effective documents in less time. Learning how to be a better speaker will reduce your stress, improve your confidence, and make you a more valuable employee. Instruction and workshop exercises feature real-world examples from the highway engineering field.

Course Topics

Document types and their characteristics

The planning process

Structural elements of a document

The writing process

Revision: self-editing and reviewing the writing of others

Preparing an oral presentation

Delivering an oral presentation

Designing visual aids and handouts

Who Should Attend

Engineering and technical personnel whose responsibilities include writing or speaking will benefit from this course.

Continuing Education Units and Professional Development Hours

Course participants will earn 1.4 CEUs/14 PDHs upon successful completion of this course. The CEU is a nationally recognized measure of participation in a noncredit continuing education program that meets established criteria for increasing knowledge and competency.