Hey, it’s Collin. Welcome to Engineering Echelons, a newsletter full of ideas and insights to help engineers excel at management.

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week.

• New and noteworthy news

• A management perspective to consider

• Leadership insights to delve into

• And more…

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Alright, let’s get into it.

Noteworthy Headlines

Global Business Remains Resilient in Face of Tariffs, Middle East War (WSJ)

Highlights:

• Business activity in the U.S., Europe, and some large economies in Asia continued to grow this month despite continued uncertainty about global trade policy and the threat of higher energy prices as conflict in the Middle East intensifies.

• However, surveys of purchasing managers recorded an increase in prices that was much stronger in the U.S. than in other economies.

Construction Starts Improved 13% in May (Dodge Construction Network)

Highlights:

• Month-over-month: nonresidential starts increased 18%, residential starts increased 2%, and nonbuilding starts increased 20%.

• Year-to-date compared to last year: nonresidential starts decreased 6%, residential starts decreased 5%, and nonbuilding starts decreased 2%.

• “Construction starts rebounded across most sectors in May, bouncing back from a sluggish April. However, year-to-date figures remain below last year’s pace. Ongoing uncertainty around trade policy and the economic outlook is likely to keep construction activity in check in the months ahead.”

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Management Perspective

We’re nearly halfway through the intern season. Interns provide fresh and youthful energy in your office and they are both a direct and indirect pipeline of talent for the future of your firm. As such, the internship experience shouldn’t be overlooked: it enhances your recruiting efforts.

I reached out to some engineering and architecture leaders to get their perspectives on the matter. They include:

• Garrett Scott, RA - Architect at DLR Group

• Jonathan Draheim, PE, LEED AP BD+C, BEMP - Senior Mechanical Engineer at CESO, Inc.

• Meagan Gibbs, PE - Healthcare Engineering Area Market Sector Leader at HDR

Here’s what they shared.

Thoughts on How to Have a Successful Internship Experience

Garrett Scott: One of the most important things about internships is marrying learning with purpose. Interns typically have lower utilization rates to facilitate on-the-job learning and often are given tasks that match existing skill sets to learning potential, but if you want to make the biggest impact, make sure what they do matters. Nothing will stick more than feeling like they were part of a team and what they did affected the outcome of the team’s efforts.

Meagan Gibbs: In this field, interns don’t need a “watered-down” experience. They need context, support, and access to real problems. Success for both the intern and the firm depends on a few key elements:

• Assign real project work: Let them model a real floor, size piping, or shadow commissioning. They should feel like they are part of the design process—because they are.

• Introduce them to field work: Even one site walk can bring engineering drawings to life and ground their understanding.

• Pair them with a mentor: Interns remember who invested in them. Assign someone who can answer questions and guide their growth.

• Teach the why, not just the what: Interns need to understand how engineering decisions impact constructability, cost, and end-user experience.

• Get their feedback: Interns can identify gaps in your onboarding, training, and documentation that more experienced hires may overlook.

Jonathan Draheim: Multiple things make a successful internship experience, but I believe three things stand out:

1. Collaboration

2. Involvement

3. Learning

Let’s look at each of these individually.

Collaboration is a soft skill that’s important in many professions, engineering included. People will remember how you made them feel, not necessarily what you know. Encourage interns to bring positive communication, a can-do attitude, and a willingness to help. This will lead to more involvement.

Hold events that interns can get involved in. Whether that’s at the office or out at an event, do things that foster connection. Doing so adds to the sense of belonging, which contributes to overall culture.

When interns collaborate with others and get involved in office events, they will learn more. Gaining technical knowledge will naturally happen over time for anyone, but the more collaborative and involved they are, the learning will expand and accelerate.

Internships as a Direct Recruiting Pipeline

Meagan Gibbs: The most tangible value of a strong internship program is when it leads to a full-time hire. If the internship is structured with intention, the intern is often more prepared than a brand-new external hire. They’ve already learned the firm’s tools, standards, and processes. They’ve seen how interdisciplinary coordination plays out and they’ve built relationships across teams.

Jonathan Draheim: If interns have positive experiences and their company had good experiences working with them, it’s a great idea to hire them full-time. From the company’s standpoint, former interns won’t have to be trained from the ground up; they already have a sense of how the company works. From the intern’s perspective, they can commonly start with possibly more responsibility and a stronger offer compared to an unknown graduate starting full-time.

Internships as an Indirect Recruiting Pipeline

Jonathan Draheim: Interns are the best “university windows” for engineering companies because they are student peers, not developed professionals one or two generations removed from college. Not that the latter can’t relate to young people, but the communication style and life stages are more equivalent with people of the same age, which is why interns can be such a great recruiting voice for engineering companies. For that reason, and many others, it is vital that engineering companies prioritize good internship experiences to enhance their reputation among students and universities alike.

Meagan Gibbs: The less obvious but critical effect of an internship is what happens when it ends. Interns return to campus and share their experiences with classmates, professors, and career advisors. Whether they describe their summer as “transformational” or “a waste of time” has a ripple effect that’s hard to quantify but easy to feel over time.

If your firm is consistently known on campus as the one that gives interns meaningful exposure to design, construction, and team culture, you become a top pick. If word spreads that interns are stuck redlining PDFs or fetching specs without mentorship, that reputation spreads just as fast.

In a talent-constrained field like engineering, reputation can make or break your ability to attract top candidates from key programs year after year. In short: every intern is either a future hire or a future influencer. What they walk away with matters.

Management Insights

Jocko Willink on extreme ownership:

“The Commodore would say: ‘Jocko, what do you need?’ and I would say, ‘We’re good, sir.’ The implication is obvious: if I have problems, I’m going to handle them. I’m going to take care of them, and I’m not going to complain. I took extreme ownership of my world. The way that worked was twofold. When I did need something, it was something significant, it was something real. And when I told the Commodore, ‘Hey, boss, we need this right here,’ I would get it almost instantaneously because he knew that I really, truly needed it.

You can’t blame your boss for not giving you the support you need. Plenty of people will say, ‘It’s my boss’s fault.’ No, it’s actually your fault because you haven’t educated him, you haven’t influenced him, you haven’t explained to him in a manner he understands why you need this support that you need. That’s extreme ownership. Own it all.”

—

Shane Snow on feedback:

“The research showed that experts—people who were masters at a trade—vastly preferred negative feedback to positive. It spurred the most improvement. That was because criticism is generally more actionable than compliments.”

—

Jim Simons on doing things right:

“You might think “building a company that’s trading bonds, what’s so aesthetic about that?’ What’s aesthetic about it is doing it right. Getting the right kind of people, approaching the problem, and doing it right. It’s a beautiful thing to do something right.”

Management Resource

The Discipline of Teams (HBR)

This article delves into the elements that make a team coalesce and perform.

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Looking forward to hearing from you. See you next time.

Collin

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