I chose to do my Scholars Practicum Project on my internship this past summer with CDM Smith, an Engineering Design and Construction Firm in Boston, Massachusetts. The practicum site was split between my office in the heart of Boston, and my bedroom where I worked from home Mondays and Fridays. I initially found the internship position at CDM Smith from a family friend who invited me to apply, and I was able to get through the initial interview process and passed my second interview straight into an internship offer! During that interview I met my site supervisor, who was a great help in getting me situated at the company and through my first week at work. The best advice I could give to future SGC Scholars would be to reach out to as many people and contacts as you have in hopes of finding a practicum site. Additionally, I know many students who had success finding internships through LinkedIn and the on-campus career fairs. Basically, your resume is in as many people’s hands as possible!
During my stay at CDM Smith, I performed many tasks involving the design of HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning), Plumbing, and Fire Protection plans for new buildings. Our main deliverable on projects is supplying the contractor with plans so that they can implement our designs, which meant that I needed to learn how to read these plans. They taught me how by having me go through their Quality Control process they called “Red Yellow Green,” which goes as follows: I look at a preliminary design and highlight all the mistakes in red. This could be anything from outdated designs because the client has requested a change, or missing abbreviations to help convey what is being asked for, to even something as simple as mismatched font sizes that need to be corrected (which is VERY important in the engineering world). Then, a designer would come in and edit all the red highlights, and change them to green to be inspected for correction, which would finally be changed to yellow if deemed correct. This was a great way for me to learn how engineering designs are drawn up, because I got to work on REAL designs in the moment, instead of watching a tutorial of how things are supposed to look. Other tasks at my practicum site involved using various engineering software to provide calculations for HVAC equipment, including a program called Carrier HAP. This program would allow me to model entire buildings to inspect the amount of heat transfer through the walls and roof (as well as many other statistics), that would eventually give us an idea of what HVAC equipment is necessary for any given room. This way, we can accurately get a sense for what needs to be implemented.
I learned more about how we decide what HVAC devices to implement in our designs than the actual science behind them. While I understand from my Thermodynamics class how heat pumps work, and what goes into making an efficient system, my work at CDM Smith was more involved in what choices we can make regarding different design choices. I believe that this is generally how engineering works on a bigger scale; some scientists and engineers research and study how to make systems more efficient, cost effective, and safer for the environment, whereas the work I was involved in was how we can take these better designs, and incorporate them into our plans.
My internship at CDM Smith has been extremely beneficial to my future as a professional engineer. I ended up really enjoying the work I did at CDM Smith, and could see myself continuing to work for the company in their Building Mechanical department. They put a lot of effort into teaching me as many things as possible about the professional engineering space, both from the technical side with programs and design experience, and the personal side: I got to experience working a 40-hour work week for the first time in my life, learning how to take the train into work every day, and getting acclimated to working in an office space all day. I got to see what my future could be like if I continue my path as a professional engineer, and I must say I’m excited! I am grateful for the experience I had at CDM Smith, and excited to continue my internship this coming summer, and further my knowledge of the professional engineering world.