Communicating in Civil Engineering

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Tom Siller, Civil Engineering Professor

Writing is more factual in industry and more team writing gets done. Because writers must convey a corporate image, individual ownership over the work is not as common.

For example, I worked on a group report with government contractors. The contractors just didn’t like what we wrote. We thought we presented factual information, and the contractors disliked it because it didn’t say what they wanted to hear. They didn’t read it for discovery; they read it for confirmation of their ideas. Here, the client determined the goals. After we were criticized, the company’s president defended us. We weren’t there because of the corporate ownership.