Most of you will be familiar when reading vacancy job descriptions that a business sets out a wish-list of knowledge, skills and experience a candidate should possess. Remember this is a wish-list and not everyone applying for a job possesses all the competencies listed.
From my research the following list are the 10 most common competencies noted on wish-lists. The list below reflects common working processes, practices and procedures.
Key areas for Field Service Engineer Competence
| 1) Understand the management of and the role as a Field Service Engineer in business |
| 2) Understand the effectiveness of listening and interpersonal between customer and work colleagues |
| 3) Delivery and collection applicable to a field service engineer |
| 4) ‘The meaning of Technician’ |
| 5) ‘The meaning of Technical’ |
| 6) ‘The meaning of Technology’ |
| 7) ‘The meaning of Engineer’ |
| 8) ‘The meaning of transport and freight’ |
| 9) Health and Safety in the workplace |
| 10) Ethical management of self/others/resources |
Field Service Engineer Time-Management
Identification of the length of attendance time to a particular customer site can be also be broken down into categories:
i) Quick Fix - Field Service Engineer attendance time 5-15mins on site |
| ii) Install & Exchange - Field Service Engineer attendance time 30-45mins on site |
iii) Install & Replace - Field Service Engineer attendance time 60-90mins on site |
iv) Project - Field Service Engineer attendance time 1/2Day/Day/Week etc.on site |
v) Engineer Assist - Field Service Engineer attendance time 30-180mins on site |
vi) Project Team - Field Service Engineer attendance time until completed on site |
vii) Representative - Field Service Engineer attendance time 10-20mins on site |
8) ‘Field Service Engineer bulk delivery/collection estimate attendance |
9) De/Commissioning - Field Service Engineer estimate attendance |
| Time-Management is an essential tool for Field Service Engineers. Germane and relevant for Field Service Engineers is to pre-assess the requirements and time attendance and vehicle for supplies ingress and egress. A car or small van should be okay for small parts or performing network builds/software downloads or upgrades at site. It is a completely different matter where bulk orders or palletised freight is involved as to the size of vehicle required. Moreover, delivering, installing and performing server network builds are more time consuming than simply installing a computer kit - Pre-built Thin /Thick Client, monitor, mouse, keyboard etc. Another time-impacting attendance is the process of fault finding. Time-Management should be evaluated on a site-by-site/case-by-case basis and equally across the whole working day/week/month. Completing one job but being delayed at site requires pre-consideration of how that impacts on other site visits. |
