Day 11 It's all about GIS Today was one of those days when I try over and over to work my way through a problem. Following up with how I ended on Friday, I went back to the ArcGIS Silverlight Viewer and tried to make a map. One of the first items I attemped to…
Category: Civil Engineering
Can I Get Some Customer Service with that Insult?
Fortunately I rarely experience terrible customer service. But this weekend, I had one of those incidents where someone whose job it is to provide service chose instead to throw out subtle insults and avoid trying to understand or address a problem for which they are responsible. So I thought it'd be a good topic to…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 10
Day 10 Today was a great day – well most days are pretty good, but a lot of really good things happened today! There were some minor tasks I took care of like arranging for our interns to help out the water/sewer department by shooting some elevations for a sump pump line they were repairing…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 9
Day 9 Welcome to Day 9 – a day filled mostly with emails and meetings which is ok because it helped me take care of a lot of correspondence and make a pretty big dent in my emails. Parking Lot Meeting This morning a few of us met with the consultant who is designing the…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 8
Day 8 The great construction mystery: Why aren't the standard frames made to fit the standard inlets? Well, the inlet frames I picked out were placed on the structures today! I went out to work with the crew while they were placing them to make sure they fit and they were set at the…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 7
Day 7 Night Meeting for the Downtown Master Plan I'm late getting this post up because I attended a meeting of our Downtown Master Plan Committee. We are in the process of having a plan prepared for our downtown area which is a big deal for us because we have such an awesome downtown and…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 6
Day 6 Staff Development Meeting This morning we had our staff development meeting where all representatives of all departments meet to discuss active developments in our city. Today we talked about several proposed and on-going prospects along with some discussion of proposed changes to regulations. One of these issues related to the creation and management…
Setting Sustainable Water Rates
Raising water or sewer rates is never a popular move, and in this economy many have tried to avoid it as if they are fleeing from a zombie apocalypse. But for many utilities expenditures are exceeding revenues, and there's sometimes little choice other than a rate increase. You can only cut so much from a…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 5
Day 5 The main items grabbing my attention today involved the following: Striping Today the stripers were in town placing the thermoplastic paint on a few of our newly paved roads. Normally I don't get too involved in the operation because we have a project engineer and technician inspecting and managing the project. But today,…
The Gamification of Public Works
Most people my age have been schooled with the "sit and listen" method. But today's teachers are breaking out of that mold by tailoring lesson plans for different learning styles using gaming ideas and platforms. So to better understand this shift in education, I am taking a summer class offered through Boise State that focuses on…