Intern at Consulting Firm

[nihil]

Hi there,

I understand these forums are for professional engineers seeking advice from other professionals. I am a student in my senior year of an ABET accredited BSME program. I have a 3.8 GPA and am about 7~ years older than a 'typical' college senior.

The advice that I seek is regarding a position as an intern at a small (14 employees) HVAC consulting firm in North Carolina. I want to know if these tasks are pertinent to what I would be doing if I had my degree, or if I should be expecting to do some grunt work:
I've worked a total of about 200 hours, completing a variety of tasks.
I started learning the ropes with AutoCAD, adding ductwork to architectural drawings (all from schematics drawn by Mechanical Eng's in the firm) and modifying master detail sheets. From there, I dealt with updating old projects, starting new projects from a template (updating title blocks, creating demo plans and new work plans, etc.), checking for project discrepancies before deadlines, and running numbers through TRACE for load calcs. Depending on project deadlines, other departments (plumbing and fire protection) have had me help them with drawings, scanning redlined documents, and finding cut sheets.

Roughly two thirds of my time was spent doing the aforementioned tasks. The rest of it has been doing a little more general office stuff such as tearing down stick sets and tubing them, answering phones and the door, organizing and creating notebooks for projects, small maintenance things (change burnt out bulbs). One of the strangest requests came from a partner that handed me a set of audio books and asked me to burn them for him (he asked really nicely and is a genuinely good person, I've had a number of interesting conversations with him).

All of my coworkers are good peeps. I've been on one site visit to a hospital which was enjoyable. And just today, a PE and a 5th year EI sat me down and went over their method of picking VAV boxes (my first tiny little piece of classroom topics coming out in industry).

To sum up: What should I be expecting from my internship? What is a comparable wage to other HVAC interns? And... does it ever get more interesting?

Thanks for your time,
- DR

 

[chicopee]

By "grunt" work if you mean doing field work in HVAC, that's good because it separates the illusions and fantasies of office work from real work events.

 

[msquared48]

I went through the same thing in Civil Engineering, working part time during school and full time during the summers for four years. I did do a lot of Grunt work as you term it, but did develop a food feel for the basics of Civil Engineering in the office. You will get to more interesting projects as you develop, but you do need to learn the reality of the Engineering world, not just not just the theories of school, a lot of which you will never see or use again.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[nihil]

Chico - I suppose I don't really know what "field work" entails as a Mech Eng in the HVAC field. My experience is limited to pretty much what I've described above. By grunt work, I meant simple tasks that have to get done but nobody really wants to do them; I.e. sitting at the scanner making sure it doesn't suck in two pages instead of one when putting together a pdf.

M*M - I'm glad to hear that you experienced something similar while interning. I might be sharpshooting, but what do you mean by reality of the Engineering world?

Thanks for your replies guys. I would still like to hear more regarding internship expectations and wage.

- DR

 

[IRstuff]

Internships vary only somewhat more than what new hires have to do. Interns are often treated as extra, slave-labor level, workers. It's a rare company, and intern, that can make the experience truly meaningful in the ultimate scheme of things. Likewise, new hires are often relegated to doing "grunt" work, like writing specs, etc. So, don't necessarily expect any great changes for a while. Moreover, while the economy is allegedly improving, it's doing so slower than molasses in January, so very little new work, and very little margin to allow newbies to cut their teeth on real work.

Wages also vary, depending on the company, and the value of the internship to both parties. My son did one internship where he essentially lost money, given that he was paid about $1k/mth, but the experience was worth it, in itself, and it led, indirectly, to his next internship where he was paid VERY well, and that led to his hiring after graduation at full wages. In both cases, his work was actual coding and testing of apps, so very good experience.

TTFN
faq731-376

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[Drazen]

i believe every wanna-be engineer should extensively go through "bottom" work to be successful later.

those who jump into "higher" design work at first never get chance to learn some things and they actually stay at disadvantage.

with what you learn in school, you would likely be able to grasp some calculation and specifying concept quickly enough, but that leaves big hole.

you would be much better one day in directing others to make drawings according to your sketches if you know in very much detail what drawing work consists of.

once you reach site visits, i would always recommend you to track the most tedious and complex fitter work, and go into any kind of site problems, no matter how trivial they might look. that is something you cannot learn neither in school nor in elegant design office, while you ultimately need it.

as y young engineer once i was tasked to do comprehensive counting of large air distribution elements warehouse. no matter how boring or stupid such task might be, i learned about few grilles and swirl distributors which look almost the same, visually, but have different function and performance. it is until today that i finding within specifications, and on site, errors committed by those who never had chance to learn about such proficiencies.

such learning is the most valuable exactly at the beginning, when your enthusiasm is at peak and you are flexible enough to adopt anything. engineers with 10 years of practice will have so many "carved-in-stone" routines or they will be too proud to ask anything about trivial things they are not familiar with, and will rather ignore problems that such lack of knowledge can cause.

therefore, path you undertook is the right one. the only actual problem exists with schools which among their students create mental picture of new engineer who work hard for years to get degree and therefore deserve to sit in shiny elegant offices and do only the most clever work from day one. once you get rid of such mental picture, you are ready to develop real successful engineering career.

 

[msquared48]

nihil:

What I meant was that school will teach you engineering theory, but not practical, in the field application to make it buildable and affordable for the client. That you need to learn from practicing engineers, and contractors, to be frank.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[RossABQ]

Your internship sounds very typical to me, particularly for having only 200 hours in. Keep in mind, presumably the comp[any is a profit-making affair. Much of your work is likely not billable, requires much more oversight than an experienced designer/engineer, and time spent by other staff coaching you makes them non-billable.

As others have said, it is very important, especially in a smaller shop, to have a good overall knowledge of all aspects of operation. Every shop needs some grunt work done. For instance, maintaining the stick sets frequently gets pushed to the "Later" pile when there are only high-dollar folks available to do it. Should they perform an overhead function or do work that can be directly billed to the client? Yet having accurate sets available is very important.

I would ask for as much field work as possible, and exposure to construction meetings if the company provides Services During Construction (which they would normally). For one thing, you can find out if your strengths are in physical layout or in component selection. And you can see first-hand the client and Contractor screaming because of some error on the drawings -- a powerful motivator to produce quality designs!

As demeaning as it may seem to answer the phones, knowing the phone system is an absolute requirement of any office job these days. It pays the same, doesn't it?!

 

[chicopee]

"Grunt work" for an ME in HVAC would be to get to the work sites, whether they are on roofs, towers, underground, machinery rooms, etc... and observe the work performed by the contractors installing new equipment, repairing old equipment or adding more equipment. Note the procedures and headaches associated with such work. You can be the guy who is there to inspect the work being performed per specifications. With enough experience in the field then you will be prepared when developing plans in the office.

 

[nihil]

Thanks guys, all very motivating posts.