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Intern project ideas?

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stkyle

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May 27, 2011
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I'm an intern with a pipeline company, I finished my main projects of making an efficient and easy to use DRA monitor (it was a mess when I first got here, it required hand calcs and like 6 different excel files...now it just takes a button push) and energy analysis and optimization for DRA and pumps along the main line.

...Problem is I seem to have run out of work. I'm assuming my boss thought it would take longer for me to do these projects, which is understandable, but now all I have to do is whatever work comes my way (ie looking up regulations, scribing and running the projector in meetings, researching energy company incentives etc) I still have a few months left and I feel like I can still do more to help. Of course I have talked to my boss a little bit about it, but I think if I can find a project to work on from my own initiative, it'll be seen as really impressive. I'm just afraid that since I finished my projects so fast, by the time the end rolls around, no one will remember the real work I did and my referals will just be average.

One thing that was bugging me - the DRA injectors seem incredibly inaccurate. We tell it to put in a certain PPM and it goes "yeah okay, I can see what you're saying there, but I'd much rather put in whatever I feel like." It seems like we have to recalibrate it way too often and even then it doesn't give exactly what we ask. Maybe I can do something to fix this? We rent the skids though, so it seems to me like the vendor should have to fix it.

I'm an aeronautical engineer (drag reduction, yeah!), so any help in finding a project idea in this unfamiliar industry would be much appreciated.

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since that DRA stuff is expensive, why not try to actually do something useful. I don't count writing software and apps as actually doing something, those things are tools. Here's a novel approach. Why not actually solve the problem. Try to save pumping all the unneeded amount into the pipeline and the money that goes with it. Contact the mfgr of the equipment on the skid that is malfunctioning, tell them what you've found and that you both should work together to save your boss some money. You'll both come out of it with shiney gold stars... if you can manage to do it.

Let your acquaintances be many, but your advisors one in a thousand’ ... Book of Ecclesiasticus
 
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