Project Manager or Engineer? Why not both?

It's been a busy week, but after a phone call on Tuesday it opened up the debate...should Engineers be taught how to project manage in college or are they natural born project managers?


I was told it was natural for those who studied design based courses to be good at project management i.e. that they instinctively know how to define, review, gather and manage information, whereas Engineers are the doers, i.e tell me what to do and I will do it! 


Now personally this is not something I would totally agree with. Yes Engineers are doers and excel at the execution of projects. As a Mechanical Engineer (a non designer) myself and having started in the electronic manufacturing industry I was thrown in at the deep end and had to learn very quickly how to project manage. But to be honest, it wasn't a big learning curve(maybe I was lucky). My college had structured our programme and final year project into research, collate and a final deliverable, which now looking back are the fundamentals of project management.


Still working with Engineers I see those who are not in the R&D side of Engineering are, for all intents and purposes, Engineering "Project Managers". They know the ins and outs of the "engineering" side of the business but they manage the day to day running of the project.


The main focus and grounding an engineer needs is to be inquisitive and imaginative to provide alternatives and improvements to processes, products and systems.


So it would seem to be that yes, Engineers ultimately become project managers as they progress through their careers but maybe a little help while in college would make that transition from Engineer to Engineering Project Manager all the smoother....