Engineer as Procurement Officer?

Hi

Procurement is an important part of a project.

If you took the opportunity of learning while you did procurement you are OK.

For example: Have you ever changed or suggested a change in design or material because the alternative were better?

How many time did you use your training to check the design or material?

I am sure you will find enough examples.

Another thing. many engineers lack procurement experience. (You are one up on them).

Exactly as Hendrik said.

I was a Manufacturing engineer for many years, last year I joined a procurement team. I use my engineering background all day every day. Suggest different materials mostly, different process to suppliers so they can be more productive, and everything in the middle.

One example, if we made a change that adds a hole to a part, the buyer will come to me and ask if $300.00 is too much to pay for the added hole? Of course, they had the drill out all ready for another hole, they should only charge about $1.00.

See? (one example, and I changed the numbers a bit to prove a point.)

Procurement or Purchasing is one important part of manufacturing, in my plant before, two of my senior procurement officers were licensed mechanical engineers. Likewise, if we were to hire new Purchasing or Procurement personnels, one of the main qualification is that he should be a Mechanical or Electrical Engineer.

I am basicaly Mechanical Engineer but I worked 33 years in Marketing which is other side of coin of Procurement. It was realy a challenging job like meeting targets in competitive envoirment, going in depth study of product so that I could answer all the queries of the customer on the spot instead of saying "I will come back to you shortly sir", meeting different kind of people and handling them in different ways,visiting various parts of country even in remote areas, training sales and service engineers, preparing tender documents each had different questions techanical and commercial etc. So instead remaining in four walls of the factories like a frog in the well you can expand your knowledge and experience vastly.

be cool every thin will b alright if not then go show urr face in the commode

Dear lanreoqunlade,

I perfectly understand your problems.

If you worry just about the formalities with your engineering accreditaion.... well you shouldn't; if you're a good worker in general, surely you'll find a college or a supervisor who is a professional engineer and who is ready to confirm and illustrate that your duties are of engineering nature and that you're involved in a good variety of engineering activities (that's all Professional Engineering Body requires).

If you worry about yourself not gaining real engineering experience (or loosing that basic engineering knowledge that you've obtained in Universtiy).... that 's a different story.

Than, you should decide (the sooner the better) who you want to be:

1. A real design engineer - a specialist who is dealing with designs and calculations

2. An office worker with a formal engineering status but no real engineering experience - a procurement specialist, a buyer, a sales 'engineer', marketing, project management officer, and so on

Nobody can help you in making this important step: your true character, personality, ambitions, personal likes and dislikes... that's what you should weigh carefully before making the most important step in your professional carrier.

My only advice: get acquainted not only with procurement specialists and such but also with Design Engineers and keep asking them about all details and technicalities of what they are doing. Only than you'll see if these activities are suitable for you.

Good Luck

Len - a Professional Engineer who's been writing various project specifications for almost a year.

I sit with a licensing body for professional registration. We would take exception to an inexperienced engineer who spent his 'engineer in training' in a procurement role. Some of the cases sited used Experienced engineers in procureent roles That's one thing, but using procuremet to get your experience is risky. That being said, I don't disagree with the comment that experience depends to a large part in what you make of your job. If the questioner insists on going this route, he should carefully document his work experience, so as to convince the licensing body in his jurisdiction that he has sound working experience.