What are the major differences between Engineering Management and Project Management ?

"Project Management."

First, there has to be a Project. That generally involves all of the disciplines that will be necessary to do market wants and needs and competition assessment, available plant/organizational resources, available facilities (space, power, laboratory, computer, etc.), available manpower in the various disciplines that will be needed to implement any Project concept, and so on. Typically, no "Project Management" people will be involved in the decision to commit to a Project, and the definition of its specifications, time, manpower, available resources and funding. Typically in making these decisions and allocations, one or more key engineers and other disciplines who will be involved in the physical implementation of the process will have been involved in the decision process. At some point, not point exactly but rather time frame, key leaders will be assigned for the technical and implementation areas, and a Project Manager will be specified to essentially coordinate the way in which these groups communicate and are given and use resources. Any actual time and results schedules and/or benchmarks are normally formed by the PM after coercing the elements that form an overall schedule from the individual discipline leaders. This involves a great deal of communication skill and organizational understanding and correlation. The PM doesn't have much actual power, that resides in the person or persons who made the final decision to do the project and the PM can only exercise influence on them. This again involves considerable communication and presentation skill, and psychology, but not actual power. Not a lot of actual engineering or technical skill is required by the PM, but it essential he understand the overall objectives and resources, and can understand the significance of the team making or not making the various benchmarks.

"Engineering Management."

In many ways, each of the technical discipline Managers function much like the PM, only in their specific disciplines. That is, they pick their staff from those top management makes available, assign the key staff responsibilities for key results necessary to accomplish their part of the team effort, allocate their resources according their best judgment, and work out time schedules with benchmarks that will result in their overall part of the project being accomplished. After that, they really leave their engineers and technical people alone to do their job, subject to meeting benchmarks. EMs do have real power, they can remove or advance their key people. But, they rarely do real engineering in the sense of doing the math / physics / programming / research / experiment... etc. themselves. Even more rarely do they have the skill to do so very well.

A career in engineering is desirable due to the high demand for engineers and high pay. Both tech and non-tech companies have increasing needs for engineers, so jobs are in high demand. Experienced managers within the engineering field also are needed. Two common positions you'll find in many companies are engineering manager and project manager. Although both positions require management skills, the positions have many differences.

Both engineering managers and project managers require managerial skills, but the groups they manage and method they use are different. An engineering manager typically holds responsibility for managing a group of employees who work solely for him. A project manager typically manages a project, and not people directly. Project managers will often be responsible for gathering teams of people to accomplish a task, but the team members may only work for him for the duration of the project.

The role of an engineering manager is usually permanent, while a project manager works on specific projects. The main responsibility for a project manager is to lead a project team but his job is normally finished once the project is complete. Projects could range from simple to complex. For example, a project manager at an engineering firm may manage the migration process from one software platform to another. This project could last just three months. Once complete, the project manager would be assigned to another project. A complex project like the construction of a new high rise building or bridge could last for years. For example, the construction of the Hoover Dam bypass bridge, which was completed in 2010, lasted five years.

Since an engineering manager is directly responsible for his employees, he is usually responsible for the relevant human resource and development aspects. In addition to annuals reviews, he is responsible for training and career development of his employees. If an employee requires termination or a promotion, he will work directly with a human resources specialist on the task. Project managers typically do not have this employee responsibility.