Good Ideas for Keeping Interns Useful and Busy 9

[STrctPono]

So we've had interns in the past and I've typically been one of the mid-level engineers that is responsible for keeping the interns busy and learning. I had one intern in the past that was fantastic! She was sharp, tech savvy, and helped me tremendously produce hundreds of pages of calculations for a bridge load rating project one summer. Unfortunately, our current intern is not up to snuff and alas, there is not that same perfect project for him to help out on in.

Besides shadowing us for field work, do you guys have any ideas for what to do with interns in a Structural Design office to keep them busy and useful? I want him to feel like he is contributing and not just like we are doing him a favor.

He's actually a Junior level CM major and not an Engineering major so having him do small structural designs actually is not an option.

 

[Lomarandil]

Do you have enough historical cost and schedule data to set him to work finding indicators that would optimize the designs for constructibility?

Some spreadsheets (e.g. bridge sufficiency ratings) aren't overly reliant on the technical knowledge.

Interns (depending on personality) can sometimes also be the best at finding documentation gaps in standard calc spreadsheets.

----
just call me Lo.

 

[JoelTXCive]

We have similar worries keeping our interns busy. My group's intern this year is bright and nice, but he just finished his freshman year.

He hasn't had statics or mechanics of materials so he doesn't have a clue what I'm talking about if I say moment or shear. (I have argued endlessly that we should only be taking on junior and senior students for interns...but have lost)

I have him doing quantity take-offs and cost estimates in excel. We also have some easier to use structural programs such as Concrete Bending and Visual Foundation. I have him set up the geometry in the programs. I also take him on site visits every chance I get. Tomorrow we are going to look at a rebar pre-pour inspection.

 

[skeletron]

Shop Drawing Review or anything where there is an actual drawing being handled. That always got my attention as a naive and young student.

 

[phamENG]

Do you have separate CAD and engineering staff? If so, have him spend a couple hours every day with the drafting department. If he's going into construction management, understanding how the drawings go together in the first place will help him a lot in deciphering them in the field.

 

[JedClampett]

We had a very green intern (like JoelTXive had) a few years ago. I had him go through our discipline specifications and verify:
[ul]
[li]The products referenced were current. If they weren't he sent a note to the DP department to replace with the current product.[/li]
[li]If they were current, he was to print the product data sheets for specification review. We put those in a binder. These are used for product submittal review. [/li]
[/ul]
I feel pretty strongly that any production activities performed by interns should be limited. I saw a lawsuit a while back where an intern wrote the specification for a liner material. There was some contentious back and forth if a substitute to the liner was acceptable. This intern was no where to be found, so the reasoning of choosing this liner was left to others. I thought it was embarrassing for the engineers (very large firm, known by their initials, in Overland Park) to use an low paid intern for a critical decision like the liner. Has anyone ever marketed their firm by saying we're going to use $15 an hour interns to do work you expect engineers to do?

So:
[ul]
[li]Shop drawings; OK with oversight.[/li]
[li]Producing calculations; No[/li]
[li]Reviewing calculations; Yes[/li]
[li]Reviewing distances between coordinate points for consistency; Yes[/li]
[/ul]

 

[STrctPono]

All good ideas so far. Currently and in the past, we have had interns do very similar activities as mentioned by JoelTXCive. I feel as if quantity take-offs are a really good way for interns to learn how to read and understand structural plans (which most of them get very little exposure to in school). We have several projects about to go out to bid and having him double check all of our quantities is actually a useful task.

We do have separate CAD staff and that's a good idea to have them shadow the drafters a bit each day.

I suppose shop drawing review would be a good idea so long as I do a full check myself on the side and we compare notes.

Jed, your idea made me think that I will use them to review a few of our projects set to go out to bid soon. I would want them to find errors and inconsistencies in the plans.

 

[IRstuff]

Unfortunately, in today's very competitive landscape, for students, internships are the gateway to better internships, which are gateways to better jobs; this means that internships, even for rising sophomores is almost mandatory, for the student. Otherwise, the all-critical rising junior and rising senior internships wind up in jeopardy, since they are essentially 3-month-long job interviews/probation periods for better jobs. Both my sons had their last internship companies offer them their first jobs.

If we want to support students and improve their overall qualifications, then figuring out something productive for the company and instructional for the student is a must; turning them into just gophers is a disservice to both the company and the student. In the former case, get a rep for having nothing useful to do for interns means that the top-notch students won't even bother to apply, and you wind up with only the less motivated and less productive students applying for internships.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[STrctPono]

IRstuff,

I completely agree. We need to remember that this internship may be very important to the student and this is their summer and they very well may have had other opportunities. Providing them with a well rounded and valuable learning experience is important and should be taken seriously by us.

Unfortunately, it's kind of a lot of work on my part to constantly be keeping them busy, coming up with new ideas, and handling my own schedule. Makes me realize that I enjoy Engineering far more than I enjoy Management.

My coworker was telling me about how his daughter interned at a very reputable ocean engineering company out here and had a great experience. At the end of her internship, all the summer interns had to present a project that they had come up with on their own and had been working on for months to the Engineering staff. I would like to get creative with this interns experience this summer.

 

[dhengr]

STrctPono:
Since the intern is so green, ask their UNI Profs. (or the intern program people) what type of work or projects they think/expect their interns can earn their pay doing, or what mini-engineering work would stand them in good stead for next year’s schooling. I would also question why they would even send someone out with so little actual engineering coursework or knowledge on an intern program, knowing that they are going to be totally useless. This just frustrates the student, the employer, the whole system, in the name of a summer job. Maybe a better place for these green interns would be as labor, using their weak minds and strong backs on various labor crews, or as jr. engineering office help on a construction site, where they could absorb a bit of what goes on by just watching while they are accepting/counting the latest load of steel, or running a revised detail across the site to the rebar crew. They shouldn’t be being foisted on a design office until they have had a first course in steel or concrete design, etc., so they have some idea what’s going on in design and analysis, that’s probably 3rd or 4th year students. I can’t imagine they would be of much help in checking shop drawings if they don’t know anything about design or what a detail should look like, that sounds downright dangerous. I do believe intern programs are a good thing to expose the student to the real world, but they should be more than a small step up from a summer job at McDonalds, and they really shouldn’t be a substitute for what the UNI should be teaching them, at the employer’s expense and inconvenience.

 

[JedClampett]

I usually delegate the task assignments to one of my younger engineers. I'm kind of grizzled and there might be a communication issue between me and a 20 year old. I don't mind teaching even very green interns how to read drawings or details. I wouldn't want to train them how to design a concrete beam for shear or do a STAAD analysis. For one, I might do it incorrectly.
But the intern has to be realistic. For the reasons above and more, I can't depend on them for deliverables.

 

[JoelTXCive]

Even though I have lobbied against the freshman/sophomore interns; the HR department makes the argument that competition for higher GPA graduates is intense.

We need to pick out the high performers early and get them in the door if want a chance at hiring them at graduation time. We do have interns that come back several summers in a row. And, we have offices in most larger Texas cities; so we will invite the interns we really like to work part-time during the school year if they want.

 

[human909]

Good thread. I'm currently in the process of doing the same thing for a fresh graduate. I'm in the situation of being overwhelmed with work for the foreseeable future with few other resources to offload it. I'm pretty much the only one in this small/medium sized process engineering company who thoroughly speaks structural engineering language.

Coming up with tasks that both train and are useful is often hard. This was the first week so far that I think I've managed to get good productive output from the new hire. I've given him a steep learning curve so I can't hold that against him.

I am continuously lining up tasks for him whenever I think of them or they are requested of me and I realise that he could handle them with basic textbook skills. If there is a queue of tasks for him no matter how small or big at least the person is continuously busy and learning and you can get on with your work except for the occasional question here or there.

 

[Enable]

I’m very curious about this thread (great replies thus far BTW). You all seem put in a significant amount of thought / attention into making the interns / new graduates experience a valuable one. I applaud this!

I do find it a little bit odd though because this level of thought, in my experience, is not the norm in at least my Province (perhaps the Canadian market generally??). Quite honestly, interns (actually we don’t really have them here, summer hires or co-op placements are what we’d call things) or new graduates, tend to be given BS work to keep them busy or else be placed on complicated tasks they can’t possibly know enough about to even be remotely useful (or even learn things!!). For example, most of the inspectors on my jobs are 20-24 YOs who, bless their hearts, try their best but it's so clear that their outfit sent them to my site without any substantial mentorship in what to look for, what is critical, etc. But truth is, I was no better during my placements!

It actually leads to a terrible cycle since licensure is primarily based on years of experience in my Province. And as long as you are at an engineering outfit, it all counts, or rather one can make it sound like it counts towards licensure requirements. And they do.

I am very happy to see our confederate counterparts take training so seriously. I think you are right to do this, as this is the time when people will learn critical skills that'll set them up for the rest of their life. Is this common? Or is it more so that the group in this thread is self-selected?

 

[geotechguy1]

Sounds like a tough out. In geotech consulting it's relatively easy to give students productive work that's relatively low risk to the business - think performing proctors and other lab tests, breaking concrete cylinders, doing concrete testing on site, compaction testing (and by low risk I mean, if they screw up one proctor or compaction test it's not the end of the world and you can train them up in a week or two to be reasonably competent and productive).

This wont help your current situation but, I reckon it's better for civil engineering students to do materials testing / geotech and surveying (being the surveyors bitch essentially), for the first internship or two - field experience is extremely valuable, you learn something about construction sites and other disciplines which will be valuable even if you plan on becoming a structural engineer / construction manager /stormwater system designer etc., and there's nothing more demoralizing than being sat in an office doing nothing. When I was student getting an internship with a structural firm was basically impossible unless you were a masters student.

 

[STrctPono]

Quite honestly, interns.... or new graduates, tend to be given BS work to keep them busy

I do think historically this has been the norm. Isn't it the classic scene in a movie where the intern is the one taking everyone's coffee orders or picking up the boss' dry cleaning? Personally, I would like to do better than this.

In my region, we have a difficult time hiring young intelligent hard working Engineers. The local University has had ups and downs with its Masters Program in Structural Engineering so locally educated Engineers are inconsistent. The rest go to school on the continental US and then may or may not come back home. So some of our interns, if we treat them well, end up coming to work for us full time when they graduate. We are not a large well known firm with interns and graduates fighting to get an interview with us and we don't advertise to interns so most of the time, they approach us based on some 3rd party reference.

 

[STrctPono]

Since the intern is so green, ask their UNI Profs. (or the intern program people) what type of work or projects they think/expect their interns can earn their pay doing, or what mini-engineering work would stand them in good stead for next year’s schooling

I was able to tell within 5 minutes of meeting him where he stood academically. Plus, in the age of remote learning, it's pretty pathetic how much personal connection these students have with their professors and how much information is effectively being transmitted and actually retained.

 

[IRstuff]

Even before COVID, if you were at, say, UC Berkeley, you might never see the professor, except on a remote monitor in a lecture hall; you would have spent 90% of your time interacting with a TA.

Nevertheless, both our kids did nothing but internships, specifically looking for quality internships, since the gopher varieties are essentially a waste of time and learning opportunity.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[JedClampett]

In my region, we have a difficult time hiring young intelligent hard working Engineers.

They said the same thing in my day. So they hired me instead.

 

[271828]

Some posters mentioned shop drawing review. Here's a vote against that. This is based on experience.

When you stamp "approved as noted" your firm had better mean it, and new guys are unlikely to recognize non-obvious but important problems. After all, the detailer who generated the shop drawings has a lot more experience than the new guy checker -- and the error got by him/her.

After your AAN, when another engineer finds issues downstream -- even pretty severe ones that aren't obvious to everybody -- someone can say "the EOR said AAN and he/she didn't say anything about this, so we're not changing it."