Mentoring in 2026 By Richard Kapp

Richard H Kapp, PE, SE, Vice-President of Mainstay Engineering Group

Think back to the start of your career. Who influenced your early professional development? Who worked alongside you, asked questions, challenged your thinking, and helped shape your approach? How did those interactions affect your career path? As you gained experience working with seasoned engineers, did your path become more focused, with less trial and error?

Mentorship in engineering is more than tutoring or career advice. It is a vital process for developing technical intuition, ensuring safe designs, and effectively applying engineering tools to create practical, innovative solutions. Mentorship accelerates the technical growth of the mentee while building leadership skills in the mentor. Organizations that invest in mentoring multiply these benefits across their teams.

We learn from mistakes—but we do not want to build them. Younger engineers benefit directly from the experience of those who have already encountered challenges in practice. Mentorship is the transfer of knowledge and judgment from an experienced professional to someone newer to the role. It may be formal or informal, but its purpose is the same: to guide growth through candid discussion, shared experience, and trust. The mentor provides perspective and insight; the mentee brings questions, challenges, and openness to learning. As employees gain a deeper understanding of both the profession and the organization, engagement and performance improve.

Mentorship is not management. Management focuses on results; mentorship focuses on growth. Effective mentorship builds the trust and ownership that strong results ultimately depend upon.

Those who mentor must understand that mentoring is not formal training, grading, or performance review—even when meetings are scheduled regularly. Mentoring shows how work is actually done in practice, beyond theory, and explains how the organization functions and what is expected of professionals within it. In doing so, mentorship develops confidence and leadership.

Long-term goals of mentorship include reducing turnover, guiding career development, improving communication, decision-making, and prioritization, and passing on institutional knowledge that improves productivity. Mentorship is not project-specific and is not a technical training program. As trust develops, mentors can provide direct guidance that improves effectiveness and professional fit without formal documentation or evaluation.

Engineering mentorship is apprenticeship-like. Mentees work on real projects with real responsibility and real consequences. Design is no longer a textbook exercise with a single solution—it is work that will be built and used. Responsibility grows with experience, and mentors must allow mentees to attempt solutions, ask questions, and learn through the process rather than pointing directly to answers. Just as knowledge flows from mentor to mentee, newer tools and techniques may flow back in return.

A young engineer may know how to perform calculations and read codes, but discussion with an experienced mentor can reveal historical context, practical constraints, and more economical or constructible solutions. Judgment comes with experience. Talking through alternatives helps mentees see beyond first answers. Sometimes a mathematically correct solution makes little physical or practical sense, and a mentor can gently point that out. Seeing how designs perform—or fail—in the field provides insight no textbook can offer.

Codes represent minimum requirements. Meeting the minimum is not always the best or most economical solution. Mentors help junior engineers interpret codes, apply professional judgment, recognize misapplications, and avoid common pitfalls that lead to flawed designs.

A newly graduated engineer often sees a long career ahead with no clear path. One ultimate goal of engineering mentorship is guiding that growth toward licensure as a Professional Engineer. Mentors address professional responsibilities not always covered in school: judgment, ethics, and the obligation to protect public safety and property. Engineers must sometimes say no—to unsafe work, inappropriate requests, or projects that should not be built. Sealing work carries professional responsibility, and mentors help bridge the transition from technical contributor to accountable professional.

Organizations that foster mentorship create employees who feel valued, engage at all levels, perform better as teams, and confidently discuss and accept decisions because they helped shape them. Time invested in mentorship is repaid through higher productivity and the development of future leaders.

Contact Mainstay Engineering today to discuss how our civil and structural engineering solutions can support your next project at info@megr.com

For more information about Mainstay Engineering Group, visit MainstayEngineering.com.