ABSTRACT
One of the most influential factors in an engineer’s success is time management. As an engineer, they will have many competing demands on our time. Like many engineers, they may feel that most of these are ‘interruptions’ or other demands that impede our ‘real engineering’ work. Engineers describe the interactive activities as disruptions to their real engineering although interactive activities are equally critical for the completion of an engineer’s tasks. Most of the time, the social interactions are unplanned and spontaneous, so they can seem like interruptions. Social interactions are essential for technical collaboration but often present themselves as unwanted interruptions if they coincide with extended thinking tasks. Research has shown that technical collaboration relies on socio-technical interactions that take up 60%–80% of working time for engineers.
