The article addressed a topic of special importance for Technical and Professional Education related to the training and development of the basic professional skill to measure. The essential objective was to establish the main characteristics of the development of this skill in the 1st year students of the Hydraulics specialty at the Pedro Tellez Valdés Polytechnic Center. The research was descriptive and assumed an integral or dialectical approach. For the characterization, a group of theoretical (historical and logical, analysis and synthesis and induction and deduction) and empirical methods (student survey, teacher interview, class observation and student performance) were used to obtain the necessary information to give an answer to the problem raised in the referred school. The results obtained from the determination of the characteristics allow to see its importance to efficiently direct the process of Technical and Professional Education in the studied specialty.