Year by Year Updates: Career, Educational and Personal

After graduating in December 2014, life was all of a sudden not a series of assignments, midterms, finals and breaks anymore. Here is a recap of 2015 and 2016.

2015

My first year as a full-time civil engineer in the Fort Worth, Texas industry. It felt as though I spent A LOT of time learning how to use Civil 3D, learning how to write effective plan notes, and learning about contract documents. My first experience of building a project design from top to bottom, from feasibility, research to city review, to pre-construction meeting was a parks rehabilitation project. Not at all what I expected when I set out to become a civil engineer but an incredible starting point. Why? Because I learned that even the tedious little details require discipline and a commitment to excellence. The other major component of my experience this year, and it should not be understated because it was the foundation for the majority of the work I do today, is flood studies. I spent a great deal of my work year learning the ins and outs of HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS and producing reports of inundation studies. Overall, this year was the foundation of my experience in analyis, design, planning and deadlines. 

2016 

I decided to take a different route with my career and work for a small engineering company where I could get more project management experience. After receiving an offer from Barron, Stark and Swift Consulting Engineers, I met with the owner Chuck Stark and a hydrology engineer who would be training me if I took the offer. The only deterring detail was that the job was in Benbrook, Texas which was significantly far from my home. Despite the distance, I decided it was a great opportunity to learn about management first hand. I have been working at Barron-Stark since February 2016 until the present date. This first year I was able to learn about grading on commercial warehouse sites, assisted living sites, and medical office sites. This experience was very different from my previous project experiences which was more city parks and a bit of residential lot projects.