Alhamdulillah this week our Feasibility Studies team presented a techno-comm study full-day technical review committee for an international asset. For me personally, it was the most challenging and complex technical presentation, as the main presenter covering multiple engineering disciplines.
But I’m sure, for many of my front end engineering veterans, it was just another Thursday.
Here are three valuable lessons I got from the experience:
1. Synthesizing input, one cohesive message - The project involved multiple engineering disciplines, with different facilities, some with unique different technicalities. There was a lot of information. When you want to present a proposal to a committee, it’s not about dumping information or flexing our technical knowledge: The real skill - and true value added here - is how well you arrange things in a cohesive narrative, extracting the essence of the message and key intent of our team members findings, and prioritize what do we want to present in that limited window, to condense for the committee and relevant stakeholders for decision-making.
2. Read the Room - Our portion was one of the last slots of the day-long presentation (our slot only started at 5:45pm). Many people just come in at their turn, but to me, I try to make an effort to come in from the start and listen in to learn from other presenters too, in order to get a feel and a tone of the committee members’ comments, major concerns. The team tweaked some info & data on the fly, and made adjustments to the presentation to best fit - in the end, every bit of last minute adjustment was worth it and was put to good use.
3. A great team - Perhaps the most valuable experience of this project and presentation was having a great team supporting us. It’s always a nerve-wracking experience to be the front-face of the presentation, knowing you don’t have all the answers. And we’ve all been in situations when committee members dish out some tough queries and the team goes completely silent. But Alhamdulillah.. our team really pulled through throughout, readily swooping in to answer and clarify. It gives a huge boost of confidence, knowing you have brilliant team that’s got your back
And finally, as always, I try to find space to add a bit of levity and appropriate humor. It’s a long day, and it never hurts to crack a few lighthearted remarks to ease the tension a bit and add in some human touch to find opportunities of making connection.
As a last anecdote, I’d like to emphasize again the importance of presentations. Contrary to what many young engineers (including myself, in my fresh graduate days) may perceive, I have always believed that presentations are an important aspect of our work - so put your best effort into it. If your months of team’s work are condensed in those few minutes (in our case, 90 minutes), then you’d better spend time to understand, arrange, revise, rehearse.
These precious minutes are like the tip of your spear: Make it count!
