ENVE510

Last week was our last lecture for the fall semester and it ended with a bang. I am pretty confident that the class’ consensus was that Alan Benevides was the most informative, interesting, and rewarding lecture we had all semester. We thought there were other great ones as well but Mr. Benevides really explained to us what it is like in the work force and finally explained to me what exactly a consulting engineer was. I always heard this terminology, but I never understood what it truly was, but since this talk, all I want to be is a consulting environmental engineer.

Mr. Benevides’ definition of what a consulting engineering is “a person who offers professional engineering services and expertise to both public and private sector organizations. They also act as independent agents and advocates for their clients, and are responsible for finding innovative solutions for technical problems and provide strategic advice to business and management.” To me this seems like a person who has a lot of responsibility and has intelligence in both the field and the business world. A person that has the technical skills but also has the ability to be “likeable” and acquire clients by gaining trust from the work you have previously done. Basically, a consulting engineer puts the fate of his/her job on themselves, as they are responsible for their own success or failure. After hearing this definition and understanding the context of the definition, I knew that this job description fit my own personal description. I believe I have the technical and business skills to be a consulting engineer, as I would like to be a seller and a doer. This “seller” and “doer” concept is what I will discuss next. In the consulting business there are four types of engineers: doers, doer-sellers, seller-doers, and sellers. Mr. Benevides is a seller-doer and from my understanding, he does his job a lot better than most do. All consulting engineers have their own utilization number, depending on their experience and job description. A ultilzation number represents the amount of time in a year you have to be billing clients for the hours of work you do. For example, if you have an 88% utilization number, then most likely you are an entry level engineer. An entry level engineer fits in the “doer” description, as all they do is technical work and have no responsibility in sales. This means that the person is not selling anything, but performing technical work that is billable. They need to make sure that most of the hours that they work are utilized towards that perspective. On the other hand, Mr. Benevides has a utilization that was around 50%, which means half of the time he is searching for clients and selling them the service that the doers (entry level engineers, engineer 2, engineer 3, ex..) will do, but technically Mr. Benevides is not billing his clients for the service he is doing. This means that he needs to make sure he is acquiring clients so the company can make money, and if he does not, than it does not compensate the few hours he is billing the clients, and he will most likely be out of his job. The reason I said Mr. Benevides is more talented than others in the workforce is because he is suppose to be bringing around $600,000 for the company according to the sales/utilization model, but he told us that has already brought in $2,000,000 for the company! I think this is why he is the Vice President of the company and that he has acquire 2% in shares of the net worth of the company.

Lastly, at the end of the discussion we had the opportunity to ask him a few questions. I asked Mr. Benevides what he thought was the most common weakness for entry level engineers and responded that their writing skills are by far their most common weakness. I was shocked in the answer as I thought it was going to be a skill that was more technical, but I guess that is the purpose of these talks, which is to learn things about the engineering business world that you never knew.

       Last week’s talk was conducted by James Skrabak who is a Corporate Health and Safety Manager for CDM Smith. What was interesting about this talk is that he was originally a chemist but now works in a field that really does not involve the field that he desired. He told us that most people who graduate with a degree tend to do a job that does not involve that particular degree that they earned. James said that most people might start in the field that they desire, but tend to branch out into a field that they have never imagined. This is exactly what happened to Mr. Skrabak. He told us that he would have never imagined himself working as a safety manager, but he loves it, and from I have heard from him, he is really good at his job. Although he might be right that most engineers will not be engineers in the future, I like to believe that engineering will be the job for me in the future, and if it is not, than there must be a really good reason for the change in plans.

       Why safety and health? Well, Mr. Skrabak told the class that it is obvious that people do get hurt and that a program (department) should be within the business to help the person get the adequate help that they need. He then told the class that the reality of such a program is it is a business necessity because when people get hurt, it cost the company money. What I did not know is that it can cost the company a lot of money, even for an injury that is not that critical, like a sprain ankle. There are different costs that are associated with an injury; there is either a direct or an indirect cost. It is known that an indirect cost can cost up to 5 times more than a direct cost. A direct cost is the medical bills that are involved with the injury, the lost in work time, and possible replacement of damaged equipment. Indirect cost can be production/project delays and additional insurance costs. If you think about it, say that a person was a project manager and they got hurt from an accident that happened while they were working and they were out of work for 2 weeks. That means that the project needs to incorporate a new leader to make sure everything is running smoothly and on time. Well that new person will need to be trained and given information about what exactly is going on the project, which will delay the project as a whole for sure. They will also need to find a person to fill in that job and they will need to make sure additional people are on site to make sure that the new person is doing the job that he/she needs to do. This is all additional cost on new employment and also additional cost on the project due to delays. Also, another interesting thing about this talk was that CDM Smith will pay for all injuries that are up to $500,000, which will allow them to be covered by insurance if something really bad happens, like a plant catching on fire, which could cost millions of dollars. The money comes from the company’s profit, which is why the company really wants to make sure that everyone is following the company’s policies when it comes to health and safety to ensure that the workers are safe and to make sure the company is not eating up all of its profits.

       Another topic that Mr. Skrabak talked about was the EMR, which stood for experience modification ratio. This is very important in the business world because this number will allow them to either have a successful business or have a hard time to get a client. For CDM Smith, there EMR is 0.57, which means that there work compensation is less, so they have more money to save. It is also a really good number, as all companies try to push for a number that is less than 1. This means that they rarely have injuries which allow the insurance company to know that they are not too risky to insure. It is allows clients to know that their company can perform and are not known to create many accidents that can prolong a project or make a project cost a lot more than anticipated.

      All in all, this was probably my most favorite talk because he had so many interesting stories, including the one about the four different deaths that happen in the construction of the wastewater treatment plant on Deer Island. He also allowed me to understand a little bit more about the business world and how it works in the field of engineering.

            Usually the class is held on the fourth floor in the Archer Building, but on Election Day, we had the chance to take a tour at a local federal building that is used by the EPA and the Federal Post Office. The federal building is called the McCormick Building and it is located in the heart of the Financial District in Boston, Massachusetts. Before we could even start our tour, we had a rough experience with the security and their x-ray machine in the lobby, which took us about 20 minutes for all of us to get “check” before we could even enter the building. To me, that was absolutely ridiculous, and I felt really bad for the international students and I was really embarrassed that our federal government found college students to be such a threat. This is a blog, and I feel like that had to be mentioned.

                When we did pass the security we were taken to one of the floors in the building to meet with Ms. Greene, who was very nice and informative. It was great to have her as our tour guide because she was one of the main personal to participate in the transition from an ordinary building to a certified LEED building. The Environmental Protection Agency works in this building, so I do find it very appropriate for them to work in a building that promotes sustainable and ecofriendly building practices. Ms. Greene brought us into one of the conference rooms where they had an incredible set up for a documentary that we were about to watch. The documentary was solely about the McCormick Building and how it was constructed during the Great Depression. The documentary talked a lot about the architecture and the history of the building, which I really was interested in, but it did start to talk about the transition of the building into a certified LEED building. In this part of the documentary it stated that it reused over 95% of the materials! I know from common construction practices, there is always a surplus of materials that weren’t used or wasted, which puts a higher burden of cost on the construction company and the buyer. If every construction company can use or reuse 95% of the materials, it will save them and the buyer money, and it will save the environment as well. After the documentary was completed, Ms. Greene asked us if we had any questions and then proceeded to start the tour once the questions were completed. Our first stop in the tour was one of the courtrooms in the building. It was extremely nice and it was incredible how they refurnished the entire room but still kept the historical features that made the room so beautiful in the first place. What was the most astonishing thing to me was that the windows that they put in cost $5,000 for each one to be installed.  The reason for such a high price is because it had to be bullet and blast proof. I am sorry, but I am a taxpaying citizen and I find it ridiculous that they need blast proof windows…they are the EPA and the Post Office, not the White House and definitely not the Pentagon. We then went to a different floor and saw the library, and what a magnificent masterpiece that was! I really do not know that much about interior design and architecture, but that library was incredible.

               The next stop was going to the green roof, which was really the only part of the tour where I felt like the building was environmentally friendly. It was on the 5^th floor and the design of it was very interesting. Ms. Greene told the class that they had these wires spaced every couple of feet that were placed on top of the green roof to prevent the seagulls from coming on the roof. She said that they were viscous to the people that were using the roof so they had to be placed. I have never heard of this concept before but it actually works. Ms. Green explained how the roof allows the building to save money because it helps cool the building in the summer and keeps the heat in the building in the winter. She also explains how they use the water that is absorbed by the green roof for the building, which saves them money and allows them to use less city water. There were also solar panels on the roofs that got a lot sun, unfortunately the green roof receives very minimal amount of sunlight, which is why there were no solar panels and most of the plants were drought resistant.

            Jay Wetherbee works for Veolia Water, which provides wastewater services for public authorities and industrial companies. Mr. Wetherbee is the assistant project manager at the Smithfield Wastewater Treatment Plant. He was initially at school studying a degree in business, but gained interest in wastewater treatment by a friend suggesting him to take one of the classes that deal with that field. Since then, he received several licenses and has been working at this specific plant for 20 years. Mr. Wetherbee is a plant operator, which works with the equipment that the engineers design.

            Mr. Wetherbee started his lecture by handing out a piece of paper to each of the students that contain a flow diagram of a typical plant treatment process. There are three major stages: pretreatment, primary treatment, and secondary treatment. At every wastewater treatment plant, the influent flows into the plant with debris, raw sewage, and whatever else that has found its way into the pipe. The screening process is the first stage of pretreatment, which removes the large debris, like branches, soda cans, and trash. This step is very simple, but it is also extremely important, because what is left is small particles and water, which is a lot easier to clean and disinfect. The grit removal is the next step, and this will remove the sand, dirt, and gravel found in the influent. Every wastewater treatment plant needs to have a grit removal because without it, it can put a lot of stress on the remaining mechanical processes, thus creating a large financial investment for maintenance. Ironically, the plant that Mr. Wetherbee works for does not have a grit removal because the township tried to cut cost to save them money during the design/build of the wastewater treatment plant. Unfortunately, it is costing the town a low of money to maintain and fix the remaining machines that operate the plant, so cutting a corner actually has put a bigger burden on the town because the total cost has exceeded the total cost if the grit removal was implanted in the design/build at the very beginning.

            Now the flow has reached the primary treatment stage, which settles out the sludge. The sludge is either sent to a landfill or burn in an incinerator. Secondary treatment is when the water goes into the aeration basins. This is where microorganisms thrive and need oxygen to live and feed of the bacteria that exist in the water. Activated sludge is the next step in secondary treatment, which removes suspended and dissolved solids. Once the water leaves the activated sludge tanks, it is disinfected, to kill pathogenic organisms that might still exist in the influent. There are two types of disinfection: sodium hypochlorite (cheaper) and ultra violet (more expensive but it is also better for disinfection). Once the water is disinfected, it can leave the plant to either be discharged into a local water source or enter another treatment process stage for further treatment. It is also important that the concentration of chlorine in the water is extremely low, because when it is discharged into the environment, the fish and other aquatic life will die if the concentration is higher than desired.

       Last week’s guest speaker was Stephan Parker, who works for TETRA TECH, and primarily deals with environmental restoration for the U.S. Navy. I found the restoration part of the discussion very interesting and packed with information, but I will focus this blog on the first part of lecture. The first part of the discussion was geared towards our career development and what specific variable could change your career for the good or possibly for the worse. Mr. Parker pointed out four key changes that could affect a civil or environmental engineer’s career:

1.)    Political

2.)    Technology

3.)    Societal

4.)    Natural resources

       A political change is very important for all environmental engineers because majority of them work for local or the federal government. The engineers work for the government because their jobs were created by the government due to the regulations and laws that were issued by a certain administration. More regulations mean more jobs; fewer regulations mean lesser jobs. Technology plays a huge role because if there is a new technological development that allows solar cells to be more efficient and batteries able to store enormous amounts of energy, than renewable energy would create an incentive for power companies, politicians, and the private industry to push for infrastructure that can implement this new technology, which in return, means more jobs for environmental engineers. Societal changes have been proven to show how it can determine an environmental engineers’ career before, because in the 1960s – 70s, there was an environmental movement that pushed for laws and initiatives like the Clean Air Act. This movement gave a bigger demand for environmental engineers. Although, if there was a movement from the society that involved people complaining about too many regulations on industry, than they might slow down the movement, and therefore slow down the growth of careers that are within the movement. Natural resources are the most obvious change that can determine the career of an engineer. If the world’s reserves in coal, petroleum, and other hydrocarbon fuels start to deplete, than they will look for an alternative. Most of the alternative forms of energy derive from renewable energy, which could increase the market for environmental engineers 10 fold, if there was a need for drastic changes in our infrastructure.

What You Need To Do?

1.)    Remain flexible

2.)    Find your core strengths

3.)    Determine your weaknesses and figure out how to compensate them

4.)    Keep training after graduation

5.)    Get certifications

       Mr. Parker continued to discuss about career development but changed his approach a little bit by opening a discussion about career opportunities. I will list a few of them with a short explanation.

1.)    Bioremediation

–          This is a growing field because of the many sites in American that are contaminated either in its soil or groundwater. Some of these sites are known as Superfund, and this is when the federal government chooses some of the most contaminated sites in the country, and pays companies to clean up the contaminants. Injections of supplement nutrients into groundwater to create a reaction that will safely eliminate certain contaminate are a perfect example of what a person might be doing if they worked in a career that deals with bioremediation.

2.)    Mines and Minerals

–          This industry is growing immensely as well as more and more countries around the world are demanding more energy and more manufacturing. This means there needs to be massive amounts of extraction of raw materials to support this energy and economic growth.

3.)    Site Investigation

–          An engineer will investigate a site to see what utilities are used or were used there, to see if additional sewers or piping will be needed, and to determine if there ever was a spill or something that could have contaminated the soil or the groundwater.

4.)    Sustainability

–          This is currently the new buzz word and the main philosophy for the environmental movement, which is balancing energy against cost, and making sure that the development effects the environment as least as possible.

5.)    Ports and Harbors

–          Ports and harbors are growing all over the world, which means that environmental engineers are needed to assess if new development will destroy or effect the local coastal environment, and determine if construction are within the bylaws and regulations for that specific region.

            On October 3^rd, the guest speaker who talked to our class was Erin Margolius, who is a project manager at CDM Smith. Her talk was focused on the process of designing and building a project and the differences between traditional and alternative delivery methods.

            Mrs. Margolius started her talk with a slide on her PowerPoint show that had to deal with the “Traditional” Design – Bid – Build process.  On the slide was a figure that contained a box that was named “Owner” and had three boxes that branched from it: Designer, Construction Manager, and General Contractor. The designers were the engineers who did all the calculations and designed the given project that the costumer desires. The general contractors are the companies that are hired to carry out and actually build the designs that the engineers calculated. The construction manager is the designer on site, the person that makes sure that everything is done correctly. If there are no construction managers, than a residential engineer can take over the responsibly as well, but most likely there will be both a construction manager and a residential engineer on a particular construction site.

                                                                          OWNER

                        Designer                      Construction Manager                        General Contractor

            What makes a project an alternative design/build are three steps: The owner, the Designer/builder, and the construction/sub-contractors. The design/build makes the project go a lot faster, usually taking months or even years off the project. An alternative design is a lot more efficient and tends to have less confrontation between the engineer and the contractor. The problem with Traditional building is that the owner always gets in the middle between the engineer and the contractor. Usually one group is blaming the other group for a particular problem, and that is where legality issues are pursued and usually someone or some company will pay in the end through some kind of lawsuit. Also, for Traditional building, the lowest bidder gets the job, creating more confrontation and a lower quality. For Alternative design/build, the owner gets to pick the contractor, which gives them the opportunity to choose quality over cost.

            Mrs. Margolius discussed about two projects that she was a part of that used the alternative design/build approach, which were a commercial laboratory and a water treatment facility. For the commercial laboratory, CDM Smith could not shut down the facility, but only parts of the lab for a day or two. This gave them even more difficulty to complete the project in time, which was asked to only take 6 months. The traditional building approach would have taken 12 months, but CDM Smith completed the project in 8 months, which saves the laboratory and the company time and money. For the public project that was in Maine, CDM Smith got the approval to have the project be completed by an alternative design/ build approach.  This allowed the company to finish the project in 2 years (24 months), instead of the projected 33 months if they choose the Traditional building route. Mrs. Margolius’ point was that it is very difficult to receive an approval for alternative building for a public project (which is very common for environmental engineers), even though it is more efficient in time, energy, and total cost.

    For the second lecture of our class, we had our water and wastewater systems professor, Mark Johnson, as our guest speaker. Instead of talking about his company that he works for and what it takes to be an environmental engineer, he focused his talk on how his special skills allowed him to help those individuals in dire need from the destruction of the earthquake in Haiti.  Before Professor Johnson discussed about his experience in Haiti, he told the class that the first time he ever left his state/country was in college, when he went to Haiti and the Dominica Republic to study erosion and conduct test for their mining industry. He was only 20 years old and it was even his first time on a plane, so it was a unique experience for him. Ironically, years after graduating from college, he went back to Haiti in January of 2010, to help all of the victims who were struggling to find clean potable water.

     Professor Johnson told the class that about 225,000 people died in the earthquake and left 1.4 million people homeless. The number of people that died was an estimate, as they calculated how many truckloads of dead bodies came to the mass burial sites outside of the city. The last earthquake to hit Haiti was 250 years ago. The epicenter was 10 miles away from the city and the magnitude of the earthquake was a 7.0. There have been several earthquakes in recent years that have had a higher magnitude than the Haiti earthquake, but the total death toll was a lot less. The reason for this phenomenon was because most of the recent structures were built poorly and they were built on top of each other, which created mass destruction and a high death toll. When Mark Johnson arrived in Haiti, there was no electricity, no water, and no sanitation. There were tents and shacks all over the place. One example of the massive refugee camps throughout the city were the 40,000 people who moved to the 9 hole golf club. At this time, the USAID OFDA, said that it will take 6 months to clean this all up. Well they were clearly wrong because to this day, Haiti is still struggling to recover from the natural disaster that occurred almost three years ago.  

    Mark Johnson had to quickly hire local engineers and college students to help with the process of building small sheds and having a water system that collected rainwater from the roofs of the shed. One of the local engineers is name Mark Eddie, and he was a bilingual engineer, which allowed Mr. Johnson to communicate with him. The rainwater was not supposed to be used as drinking water because it lacked the minerals, but its sole purpose was for hygiene and cooking. The civilians received their drinking water from “bladders” which were strategically placed 100-200 meters away from everyone else. This allowed every person to have access to water, and it was a 24 hour process of refilling the bladders with trucks that had tanks, so they could bring in fresh water from sources outside of the city. The interesting story about these bladders was that the water inside of them was so clean that it would pass the regulations that are placed in the United States. Although, when they tested the water that was in the buckets that the citizens used to transfer the water from the bladder to their shelters, they were considered to be highly contaminated. The theory is that the water got contaminated by their practices of lifestyle, but that their body could actually handle the higher concentration of contaminants. They could tolerate20-30 chloroform per 100 ml. This phenomenon could explain why there was no one who got sick from the water they were using.  

    He closed his lecture by talking about the shelters that were being made from a cargo ship of supplies that were donated from Lowes. They were designed for five people and each one of them had a rainwater collector. The record for how many family members that lived in one of these shelters were 15 people! It is amazing to see how the people of Haiti found a way to persevere and I envy their courage and willingness to survive. It is also amazing how we have Iphones and television, and yet there are people who live relatively close to the United States who do not have access to clean drinking water.

Last week I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Vicens’ lecture that attained information on his company, the different jobs and fields that exist in his company, and how undergraduates can properly be prepared to be qualified in the field. Dr. Vicens is the Group President for the Consulting and Engineering Divisions at CDM Smith. He began his discussion on the different services that his company offers to the public and the government. Before he went into more detail on the services they offer, Dr. Vicens made sure to tell us that there are many different careers for engineers and not all are technical.

The 5 markets that CDM Smith offers are: water, environment, transportation, energy, and facilities.

On his slide show, he had these examples to represent some of the projects that CDM Smith has done in each of the five services they offer. The one project that impresses me the most is the Marina Barrage in Singapore. CDM Smith received the Superior Achievement Award, which is the highest honor of the competition for the best project entry. When I learned that fact, I knew that CMD Smith was a world-class company and that we the students were very lucky to have him on campus and to have the opportunity to ask him questions.

Dr. Vicens then backpedaled a little bit to explain how the company was founded and where the company fits in the current United States and global market. He told us that CDM started in Cambridge and its main purpose was to start designing sanitary facilities. They were a small company that worked on local projects. Now they have over 100 offices in the U.S and over 5,000 employees worldwide! Even during these hard economic times, Dr. Vicens said that the company as a whole is breaking even. He followed that statement with a smile because he told us that was great news considering how bad the economy has been throughout the last couple of years.

The purpose of this lecture though was to enlighten us on the tools we need to further our careers. Dr. Vicens explained to our class that even people in the workforce need the tools to properly succeed because in year 2000, CDM learned that only 30% of the staff understood the criteria for promotion. To counter that, the company developed a program that helped the staff navigate through their years at the company.

There are four career paths:

1. Administrative Services 
2. Construction
3. Degreed Technical Specialist Path
4. A Technical Support Path

What was relevant for us the students is the “degreed technical specialist path” because we are undergraduates studying to be environmental engineers. Dr. Vicens knew this as well, and explained to us how there are four different career paths inside the degreed technical professional career.

1. Technical manager
2. Technical specialist
3. Program and project manager
4. Client service manager

 Dr. Vicens explained how he was so lucky to do all four of the different career paths that were within the degreed technical professional career.  He made sure to tell us all that even though we have a technical degree, about 80% of the entire workforce at CDM Smith does some technical and some manager work.

At the end of his lecture he allowed the students to ask him questions for about 15 minutes and I thought that this was the most important and revealing part of the class. As a junior looking to find an internship for this summer, I was very eager to learn how the process works, and what I need to do to better my chance of retaining an internship for the summer. Dr. Vicens gave me some great advice. He told me that the best time to apply for summer internships was during my winter break. He said that the resume needed to include what projects I have been working on and if I have had any field related jobs. One new thing I learned was that I had the opportunity to write a cover letter that would be attached to my resume. This will allow me to further explain why I think I am qualified to be hired as an environmental engineer intern for the summer.