Author: sheridan_page

My final day at DPR started at 8 AM when I arrived at the office. I met with Justin, a DPR employee who works with 3D computer models to assist with the management of construction sites. We traveled to a United Therapeutics building that Justin is working on. There, we attended a meeting with other employees to check in on the status of the project. Justin also showed me the 3D models of the building. After the meeting, we went to the UNC hospital that I was at on Tuesday. After a quick lunch in the cafeteria, Justin brought me into the construction area. He showed me a 3D rendering of the space that was made by compiling data from laser scans of the building. It was really cool to see the room I was in on the computer program. We then proceeded to a conference room in a far-away corner of the hospital for a trade coordination meeting with some of the other workers. We went back to the office and he showed me a few more building models.

Today was my second-to-last day at DPR. After meeting Dr. McElreath for a few minutes this morning, I worked on a takeoff for the lighting at one of DPR’s current projects. Essentially, I used the On-Screen Takeoff software (OST) to mark up the plans. This tells the electrical estimators at DPR how many of each type of electrical or lighting device the building requires so that they can make an accurate cost estimate. It’s quite a challenging job that requires a lot of attention to detail, since there’s about 10 types of electrical outlets and about 30 types of lighting that have to be marked. After finishing the takeoff, I met with Rachel to review my work. She said that I did a good job overall, but there were a few conventions the estimators tend to follow when doing takeoffs that I didn’t know about. After finishing the meeting, I said goodbye to Mark. He’s taking the next two weeks off for vacation. When Mike got out of his meeting, he took me to a nearby Mexican restaurant. We then went to the WeWork site at One Glenwood, where we attended a meeting with some of the subcontractors. At that point, he’s letting me go early.

 

Unfortunately, I’m not able to provide a new picture for today. I’ll add another picture of the dog from yesterday instead.

Today was another interesting day in the office. I spent an hour or two finishing up the count for the electrical estimate. I also sat in on Mark’s meetings with Rachel. They are currently working on a project proposal. We went to Durham for lunch, and a meeting with an electrical engineer. The engineer spoke with me about choosing a career in electrical engineering. He told me that he never would have imagined he’d be working for a construction company when he was in college. Our conversation made me realize that I won’t necessarily be able to choose a specific sub-discipline if I go into engineering. After lunch, we went back to the DPR office.

I’m now working in the DPR office in Morrisville, instead of EIG. At about 8:00 this morning, I met with Mark Dailey, an electrical estimator who works at DPR. Unfortunately, he had a lot of boring meetings, which meant that I also had a lot of boring meetings. After his meetings were done, he helped me set up On-Screen Takeoff, a software used to estimate the cost of construction projects. He showed me how to use the “count” tool to determine the number of several different types of electrical devices in the plans. Then, he took me to lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant that he frequents. I worked on the electrical count for the rest of the day.

 

Today was my last day at EIG Electrical Systems. The first couple of hours was taken up by a presentation given by some EIG employees to DPR employees. The objective of the presentation was to demonstrate the capabilities and operations of EIG and to illustrate the difficulties of electrical work to non-electrical tradesmen. The first hour and a half or so was taken up by an exceedingly boring PowerPoint presentation. The rest of the presentation was a demonstration of the difficulty of fishing wire through long conduits with more than 360 degrees of bend. After the presentation, I helped to clean up the office. Jonathan showed me some electrical plans, and then we ordered lunch. After lunch, I built a prefabricated electrical device that is UL listed. EIG prefabricates devices like these to reduce the amount of work at the job site, which reduces labor cost. Since the devices are UL listed and sealed with a UL label, the devices also don’t have to be inspected, which saves even more time. After I helped put away tools, it was time to leave.

I arrived at the shop at 8 AM, like normal. Johnathan continued to teach me how to bend and attach conduit. After an hour or two of working on the demonstration table they’re working on for a class tomorrow, he showed me some electrical plans for a project EIG is working on. I then traveled to a work site with Sean. He needed to drop off an arc flash-resistant suit at the site so that he and another worker could check that a 3-phase circuit breaker panel was disconnected. On the trip over, we had an interesting conversation about acceptable risks that provided some insight into his job as a safety manager. Having checked that the panel was truly disconnected, we took the suit back to the office. Johnathan then explained the shop’s prefabrication capability. By fabricating electrical assemblies in the shop, EIG is able to reduce time and cost associated with their projects. Additionally, after going through an intense inspection process for each device they fabricate, EIG is one of the few companies that can print UL labels for their assemblies. This means that the assemblies don’t have to be inspected when they are installed at the site. Tomorrow, I’ll get to make one of these UL-listed assemblies.

Tomorrow’s my last day in the EIG shop. Next week, I’ll be back at DPR’s office to work with the electrical estimators and planners.

Today I worked at EIG Electrical Systems, an electrical subcontractor owned by DPR Construction. My day began with an hour long meeting about workplace safety with Sean (TL;DR: always follow the procedures, lest you be boiled to death by a jet of steam). We then went to a couple of active construction sites, where I saw the types of electrical work that EIG does. After a quick lunch break, we went back to the EIG shop, where we played ping-pong for about 20 minutes. After spending a few minutes rearranging some of the office, Sean and another employee began to show me how to measure and bend conduit when making runs for electrical cable. It takes a surprising amount of thought and planning to run the conduit, and bending the conduit well takes an enormous amount of effort and skill. Tomorrow (and Friday) I’ll be back at EIG for more conduit bending and shop work.

Today was my first day at DPR Construction. I began my day at 7:30 this morning when I met Mike Svirsko, my contact at DPR, for breakfast. We discussed school at Cary Academy and our plans for the next two weeks. We then traveled to One Glenwood Avenue, an office complex that DPR is building. There, I attended a meeting regarding the status of the project and got to meet many other employees. I also got to see the building drawings and check the status of several items on the “punch list,” a list of last minute things to do before the customer inspects the project. After eating lunch at the store, we went to the DPR office where I received a laptop and met Mark, an electrical estimator who I will be working with next week. Finally, we visited EIG Electrical Systems, an electrical subcontractor owned by DPR. I’ll be helping fabricate electrical systems there the rest of this week.