At Kiewit, I was placed on the Henery Ford Health South Campus Central Energy Hub mechanical engineering team. This facility was being built to provide running water to the adjacent hospital. On the team, I was in charge of completing set point calculations for each system in the facility and developing a specification and deliverables package to be sent out for bid to vendors. In addition to work on my main project, I was also assigned an overhead task that can aid in all future projects; developing tools to determine the pressure drop caused by weld beads in HDPE pipes. This project was a great experience for me as I got to research the problem, run simulations in AFT Fathom, compile and interpret data in Excel, and finally deliver a clean Excel sheet that quickly takes pipe parameters and outputs an estimated pressure loss due to weld beads.

In my role, I worked alongside the plant's reliability team to ensure all equipment was kept up and running, and if something did go down, figuring out what went wrong and how to not only fix it but prevent the same issue from arising in the future. Every project was different from the last and offered a new opportunity to learn about a system in the plant. To best understand and diagnose the problems I encountered I looked over mechanical drawings and P&IDs to get an overview of the system, then I would observe the system or equipment in the field to gain a further understanding. From here there were many different directions the investigation could take such as communicating with vendors, working with maintenance and operations, or self-guided research into the topic.

As a mechanical estimator, I was tasked with helping to develop estimates for proposals the company was pursuing. It is essential that the estimate is carried out effectively because it is critical that the estimating department gets the cost correct on all estimates in order to ensure the success of the project. In my role, I used InEight Estimate to enter cost items and man hours to calculate and compile cost, read and comprehend drawings in order to assess the mechanical process equipment needed for the site, and apply cost-effective and accurate pricing to my estimates. I am also responsible for understanding the scope of work from requests for proposal and applying competitive manhour units to take off quantities.

Through my work at The Home Depot, I am able to exercise my skills in customer service and retail and my passion for engineering and problem-solving. On top of the skills I brought with me, I've also learned plenty from my coworkers and management about plumbing, HVAC, hardware, and more. My favorite part of the job has quickly become the interactions I get to have with customers. Working through a problem and coming up with a solution is very satisfying for me and The Home Depot provides me with many opportunities to solve problems daily.

My work at the grocery store Jewel-Osco has also given me plenty of experience in customer relations, organization, and teamwork. At Jewel, I worked in the Drive Up and Go department which entailed accurately shopping for customer orders and properly organizing them in the back. I also had to communicate with customers to understand their needs and determine suitable replacements for products. Through me and my team’s combined effort, we were able to keep our on-time pick-up percentage above 95% for every quarter we have been in operation.