From intern to slavedriver in 2 short years...

WOW! I am amazed at where I found myself today and the thought process that went through my mind. I was proud of myself and my commitment to valuable learning experiences. To begin with, here is a copy of the organization chart of my office:

A little background information... TE = Transportation Engineer and TT = Transportation Technician. The number represents the level of the position, as you can see, a TT3 is equivalent to a TE1. Also, TT1 is a position rarely used... mainly for someone without even a vo-tech degree or drafting experience.

This morning I found myself sitting in the conference room with my TE3 and fellow TE2, plus one more person: the intern assigned to our squad. We discussed with her some of the projects we had going on and tried to think of tasks for her to work on over the summer. Sadly, many of our projects are moving slowly right now, so we don't have much for even ourselves (TE2s) to do (let alone the TT3 and TT2s).

I was somewhat disappointed to hear "filing, etc." brought up as a major task for Katie (the intern's name) to do. I am not too far separated from my intern experiences. I understand the intern's point of view.

• An intern is a college student, learning to be an engineer.
• An intern desires to gain valuable knowledge and to learn about how the profession functions in the "real" (non-academia) world.

I volunteered that she could help me calculate the level of service for roadways once we receive the necessary information from the county of a proposed interchange. It sure seems like nearly all the projects are interchanges in my region, but that is not true!

I kindof felt bad that I could not think of anything more valuable to assign until the data is received. As I worked on completing a Project Management Plan (similar to a certain software engineering course ;) ), I began to compile the necessary materials for calculating a level of service (LOS) as well as some examples. I may only be around for a little over a month now, but I am going to minimize the meaningless work. Not to say that filing is unimportant, though. Just not as useful in grooming a future engineer ;)

And don't think I am giving her some great and splendid task in the LOS calculations either. The calculation is rather simple for a basic freeway segment and even for merge and diverge points (where a ramp merges or diverges from the freeway). But can become tedious over a section of freewway with multiple interchanges. LOS needs to be calculated for both directions of travel, the current, planned, and design years. The planned and design years will even contain "build" LOSs (a new interchange is built) and "no build" LOSs (a new interchange is not built). I even plan on having her at first (if not completely) do the calculations by hand rather than with the slick program the department purchased. It is more of a learning experience this way.