An investigation into the impacts of the engineering management training programs in Saudi Arabia

Two-thirds of engineers are dealing with management activities. The need for engineers with the abilities to apply engineering principles and the skills to manage people and projects in technical organizations is rapidly growing. Training institutes all over the world have offered and continue to offer Engineering Management Training Programs (EMTP) to thousands of engineers.; This descriptive study employed an integrated framework by combining the EMTP with training evaluation in order to investigate the impacts of the EMTP and the affecting training factors that inhibit or facilitate the EMTP. The framework's hypothesized impacts on engineers, projects, and organizations, and hypothesized associations between the affecting training factors and each evaluation level, were examined. The EMTP's survey questionnaire was developed as a data-collecting instrument, and a 5-point Likert-type scale was utilized as a measurement scale. The reliability coefficient alpha for this survey was 0.89.; The study's subjects were 149 former trainees of the EMTP at the Institute of Public Administration (IPA). The IPA is the largest training institute in Saudi Arabia. The subjects' responses to the EMTP's questionnaire were analyzed through descriptive statistics analysis (e.g., frequencies, measures of associations).; The majority of the subjects: reacted positively (favorably) to the EMTP; achieved "B" or above as their EMTP's final grades; transferred the gained skills and knowledge of the EMTP to their work-settings; agreed that the EMTP had positive impacts on them, their projects, and their organizations; and agreed on the affecting training factors, which inhibited or facilitated the EMTP.; Analyzed at the 0.05 level of significance, this study produced statistically significant associations between most variables in the study's framework. The results of this study support in general the study's framework.; It has long been believed that Engineering Management directly improves performances of engineers, projects, and organizations. This study has provided some evidence, based on empirical research, to support this belief and has shown indications of the EMTP's positive impacts on engineers, projects, and organizations.