Job Shadowing

Job Shadowing was a fantastic experience for me! I went to Allen Henderson & Associates Structural Engineering Firm downtown.  My Job Shadowing person was Mark Henderson.  As I arrived, he introduced himself as the husband of a teacher I had in elementary school, my Enrichment teacher.  The company was in an old house, and it was an interesting small business environment.  Previously, I had seen Engineering as only a big business venture, so this was a fresh new experience.  The company's workers, being part of a small business, had more experience in many aspects of Engineering.  The first thing that we did to start our day was surveying.  We surveyed the whole parking lot in front of the company.  The surveying that we did was a great experience.  Previously, I had been introduced to surveying.  However, the others that had previously attempted to explain this process didn't really explain what it was that they were trying to accomplish.  While shadowing, I learned of this purpose.  The surveying device we used was quite interesting.  One surveyor would hold a prism at a point of data to be recorded.  The other would use the surveying gun to locate and record the point.  Points were recorded on x, y, and z axes.  Matthias and I took turns shooting the gun and holding the prism for several hours, but the time passed by very quickly.  When we finished surveying, we took our data up to the office.  The original plan of the day included us entering this data into CAD; however, the time escaped us, and one of the office workers ended up completing this task for us while we were at lunch.

Before lunch, we went to a construction site.  The site was a future long term care medical facility which the firm that we were shadowing had helped design supports for.  We received a complete tour of all floors of the facility, and even went up onto the roof.  This tour was guided by the construction manager of the site.  This put into perspective just how much work goes into an engineering, architecture, and construction project.  The firm was only a small part of the project, intermingled with work of electrical and mechanical engineers.  On top of all of this work to make the building functional, architects worked to design aesthetically pleasing aspects of the building.  After all of this was designed, construction workers were employed to carry out the designs laid out for them.  This process, being quite extensive, was not perfected.  In fact, we fell witness to long-standing arguments between the construction workers and designers.  These arguments, we were told, had resulted from stubbornness of Engineers and Architects.  All argument could have been avoided if these designers could have just admitted their mistakes.  This was a truly eye-opening experience.

After this site visit, we went to lunch, where I ate WAY too much pizza.  However, Mark was impressed with my massive stomach capacity.  I felt quite accomplished...

Anyway, after lunch we went to another construction site, the bridge under construction on Washington Street (the one that they have been working on for over a year!).  Apparently, due to inconsistencies in the design and construction processes, this bridge collapsed early in construction, and the workers were forced to start over.  It was interesting to see this familiar bridge that I drive over quite often from the perspective of an Engineer.

Overall, the day was a fantastic experience, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it!