Effective Collaboration in Engineering Practice

The assignment content discusses engineering practice in Australia and the importance of collaboration in team projects. It highlights the benefits of participatory collaboration, including innovation, efficient project completion, and cost savings. However, it also notes that there are frustrations associated with collaboration, such as slow decision-making and dealing with non-team players. The writer reflects on their own work behavior and identifies areas for improvement, including being more punctual and attending work regularly, meeting deadlines, and taking responsibilities for errors. They also express a desire to become an effective engineer in Australia and develop skills required for software development.

ENGINEERING PRACTICE IN AUSTRALIA 1
Engineering practice in Australia.
By
[Student’s name]
Course
Institution
Date

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Collaboration refers to act that enables individuals to work together to achieve a common benefit
such as project completion. Technology enhancement has enabled collaboration to be easy as
people who are far apart can still work together by the help of teleconferencing (McDonald,
2015, p.90). For collaboration to be effective, there must be a person willing and capable of
acting as the team leader. The leader should ensure there is participatory collaboration in the
team that will lead to the exchange of ideas that are healthy to projects. The leader will be
responsible for ensuring that each team member has a specific role to play in the team and avoid
confusion.
Some skills needed to achieve an effective collaboration in the team are easy to embrace to
embrace while other are gained as one grows in the engineering profession. The skill of tolerance
is very important and very beneficial as it enables me to be patient for the team to be effective.
Team members are from different cultures, have different ideas and opinion and even different
manner of handling stress, hence being tolerant will prevent the team from having conflicts
(Pastel, et al.2015,p.19). Communication skills which I possess have enabled the team to work
effectively as I know how to pass instructions in a friendly manner rather than commanding
manner. I am stilling developing some skills such as asking for help when needed, apologizing
when I offend team members, learning how to cope with failures and active listening skills.
Participatory collaboration has proved to have many benefits in team projects. Through
collaboration, the team is able to complete projects efficiently as innovation is enhanced. This
enables the team to have better and efficient ways of completing the project at hand and saving
resources. Collaboration also enables sharing of ideas which lead to the development of projects
that help the team to complete the project in time (Rämgård, et al.2015, p.356). This helps to

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save on the cost of the project. Collaboration also promotes team work in the project, and this
helps to prevent team members from having different objectives which can affect the project.
Collaboration also has some frustrations that cannot be avoided such as slow decision making as
there is consultation between team members and this may slow down the process of making
critical decisions that affect the team project (Vigoda, 2000, p.330). Some team members are not
team players, and this makes it difficult to achieve collaboration in a team, and this is frustrating.
During the close of the financial year, I am the one responsible for ensuring that each accounting
department has completed and updated their financial records. Last year, one staff who was new
in the organization had not updated the records and I was to give him instructions on what to do
to update the records. It was easy issuing the instructions because I have previously seen how the
person who used to handle such records used to do (Baron, et al.2010, p.290). There were also
difficulties when issuing the instructions because the employee was new to the organization and
he had different approaches to what I was instructing him. This is because the organization he
worked in previously used different approaches.
Effective engineers in Australia have efficient work behavior that enables them to perform their
tasks in a more fulfilling manner. I also want to become an effective engineer but before I can
boast of being one of the best engineers in Australia, I will have to make some changes to my
work behavior. Such changes include being more punctual and attending work more regularly
(Boniwell, and Zimbardo, 2015, p.230). After I complete my tasks in time, I fail to come to work
on the excuse of that I have done my tasks. Attending work regularly and being more punctual
will enable myself have more time to learn from others and increase my experience.

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I will also have to change my behavior of not completing tasks in time and meeting deadlines.
Meeting deadlines will help me to become an effective engineer in Australia and other countries.
I have also had to change my work behavior of not accepting responsibilities. For projects to be
effective, engineers work in teams. Failure to take responsibility can adversely affect a project
and affect its objectives. I will have to learn to take responsibilities for my errors so that they can
be corrected in time even if they are very costly. This will enable the team to correct deviations
where necessary.
To effectively complete projects, I need to effectively manage my time to avoid not meeting
deadlines which are very costly for any engineer all over the world because it spoils a good
reputation (Bruegge, et al.2015, p. 17). I am not that effective in managing my time. I cannot
also say that I am a poor time manager but I need a lot of improvements to become an effective
engineer. My best behaviors in time management are that I complete the most important projects
and tasks first and then the others later. I can manage to do related tasks at the same time without
much problem because my concentration level is very high, and also I organize my work and
tasks well and this helps me to save a lot of time because of my efficient task organization. My
worst behaviors which can affect my projects include not learning to say no to some tasks. This
causes me to be occupied most of the times doing tasks that do not contribute to the project, I
sleep a lot, play computer games and also I do not know to ignore unimportant tasks.
I want to work in software developing companies. I want to be their software engineer in charge
of developing operating system software that is needed by computer manufacturers all over the
world. To achieve this fete, I need to possess certain skills such as core programming language
skills, university degree, computer programming skills, attention to details and logical and
structured thinking approaches to develop the best software (Scholten, and Schilder, 2015,

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p.480). As for the skills, I do not have such as knowledge of computer aided software
engineering (CASE), I will have to enroll in the best college will train and be able to master
them. I will also learn from those with experience during team projects.

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References
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Boniwell, I. and Zimbardo, P.G., 2015. Balancing time perspective in pursuit of optimal
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Bruegge, B., Krusche, S. and Alperowitz, L., 2015. Software engineering project courses with
industrial clients. ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 15(4), p.17.
McDonald, S., 2015. Managing issues through cross-sector collaboration: Unilever and
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Pastel, R., Seigel, M., Zhang, W. and Mayer, A., 2015. Team Building in Multidisciplinary
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Rämgård, M., Blomqvist, K. and Petersson, P., 2015. Developing health and social care planning
in collaboration. Journal of interprofessional care, 29(4), pp.354-358.
Scholten, K. and Schilder, S., 2015. The role of collaboration in supply chain resilience. Supply
Chain Management: An International Journal, 20(4), pp.471-484.
Vigoda, E., 2000. Organizational politics, job attitudes, and work outcomes: Exploration and
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