Documentation 101: Life as an Engineer

As a recent college graduate working in the medical device industry, I quickly learned that life as an engineer is different than what is envisioned and different than what is taught in the hundreds of undergraduate programs across the nation. Today, students graduate with undergraduate training that provides them with a solid foundation in the technical fundamentals of engineering. Four years of rigorous training leave students with a relevant skill set in the math and sciences to succeed in engineering work. However engineering work and work as an engineer, as I have come to experience, are related but different.

Engineering work is the technical analysis that society envisions engineers doing: the design, development, and testing of products, the number crunching, and the problem solving. In essence this is what engineers do. However being excellent in those areas does not constitute an excellent engineer. The one missing piece that current students could use more training in is communication. Work as an engineer involves having the proper background knowledge and training to perform the engineering work in addition to the ability to create and maintain the proper documentation that is necessary to communicate and record the relevant technical information, results, and findings.

Working in a field governed by regulatory bodies such as the FDA, the mantra “If it hasn't been documented, then it hasn't been done” is crucial for the success of medical device firms. Professors and mentors must emphasize the fact that without the proper documentation, even the most brilliant of engineering marvels are irrelevant. Without the appropriate records, drawings, and notes engineering work is lost in translation, forgotten, and even misinterpreted, causing what was once a great idea to become a dire disaster.

As I have come to quickly learn, documentation is the language through which engineers must be able to communicate fluently. It allows for the explanation of procedures, recording of results, description of findings, and the ability for an engineer to store and maintain what they have learned so that such important information can be shared with the appropriate people not only today, but also in the future.

-SA

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