One of the many benefits I have working for my current employer is the opportunity to work with other staff members who excel in their profession. And even though they impress me on a daily basis, this week I was totally blown away by the awesome job our city planner did on his report to…
Category: Construction
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 29
Day 29 Automatic Meter Reading Research For about a year we've been researching automatic meter read (AMR) systems. Because our neighboring communities to the north and south have also been going through this process, we decided to combine our efforts and collaborate on the research. So as a group we've met with several vendors over…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 27
Day 27 Road Project Now that our road project is substantially complete, we've been working on getting out a pay estimate. The project engineer prepared the estimate late last week and gave it to me yesterday. So this morning, I spent some time checking over the final quantities and comparing them to the original quantities…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 24
Day 24 Safety Meeting Today was the first Thursday of the month and that means safety meeting day! The whole public works staff attends the monthly safety meeting, and the topic today was backhoe safety. If I get a chance I'll put up a post on it later this week because it was interesting and…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 21
Day 21 This morning, I started out the day going through emails – after getting them down to a more managable level, I want to try to keep it that way. I did summarize some of the information regarding the SSA we are looking into and sent it out to other staff members. And then…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 20
Day 20 Today was our public works staff meeting. Only the superintendents of each division were at this meeting. Our supervisor usually begins each meeting by going over items and issues that relate to the entire department as a whole. Then each of us gives a division report – most of the time the majority…
A Day in the Life of an Engineer – Day 18
Day 18 Unfortunately today I don't have much to post because I took part of the day off to take care of things at home. But this morning, before I left work, I did work again on some permits finalizing the utility permits. Also, because of some new information related to the development for which…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 17
Day 17 Alley reconstruction project Well I waited until later tonight to post because we had a public meeting tonight at city hall for an alley reconstruction project. The city has over the last several years replaced their alleys with concrete pavement, and this one is the last in this particular neighborhood. We completed the…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 16
Day 16 Back to work after a weekend of working on a presentation I'm giving in September at the Illinois Association of Highway Engineers conference in Normal, Ill. I'm really looking forward to the event, and if anyone reading this is going make sure to say hi at the conference! Development Meeting So today was…
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…