Beyond the Blueprint: My Whiting Turner Internship Practicum Reflection Essay

This summer (May – August 2023) I worked with Whiting Turner at Johns Hopkins Hospital main medical campus in east Baltimore. This project I worked on application of natural and physical science, with emphasis on the physical science. This project is 454,000 SF of construction, consisting of a 14-story 171,000 SF North Tower addition and 284,000 SF of renovations covering 11 stories within a 24/7 operational hospital. The duration of the project is 4.5 years. I worked directly with project engineers and project managers on the interior finishing teams in the south tower renovation and the north tower addition at the Children’s Medical Surgical center.

I was fortunate enough to have connections to this company through my late father Terry Spencer. He built his career through this company, and with that I had already made several connections through him. I was able to reach out to a family friend who helped me submit my application, once that was received, I was interviewed twice and was than accepted into the intern class of 2023. Before I reached out through a family friend, I went to career fairs and emailed with the project manager in attendance, who guided me to the application process. Whether you already have connections or not I really recommend going to career fairs and meeting as many people as you can.

I completed different tasks everyday learning something new with every task I took on. I completed requests for information, takeoffs and drawing specifications. A request for information is when you ask the subcontractor or designer about something in the drawings or submittals. Takeoffs involve making sure the drawings match the orders that we submitted for materials. And drawing specifications means clarifying drawings and putting these clarifications is a ‘spec’ or specification file. I would also complete punch list items and quality checks which means I got the chance to walk around the site and make sure things were on track and matching with the drawings. This was a very large project, and I spent a decent amount of time out on the site. I oversaw logging and managing the temperatures from floor 4-8 to protect the install of the resinous flooring in the lab spaces. Along with working with my direct supervisors on the project management track I was able to get viable and helpful hands-on experience with the field team as well. With the field team I was able to help prepare for Maryland Occupational Safety and Health inspections as well as listen in on meetings with superintendents and subcontractors about the operations at hand.

By performing hands-on work with this company, I was able to witness firsthand socio-technical thinking or a link between things, persons, and events especially that is or is part of a chain of causation. This project, being the size that it was, had hundreds of people and technologies working together. I was fortunate to be on the project management side of it all and really began to understand the sheer size and amount of work that must go into even the smallest of tasks. One of the main sciences of this task was the engineering itself and the construction of a multimillion-dollar facility. Witnessing the amount of time and manpower, as well as everything that occurs behind the scenes before the project even begins was incredibly eye opening. I learned about a lot of the technology that I would later learn how to operate throughout the internship as well as throughout my time at the University of Maryland.

Throughout my internship experiences, spanning both summer and winter, I gained a significantly heightened sense of self-awareness. I learned that I could persist and complete the jobs given to me, even in distracting and overwhelming workplaces. I realized I do a lot better when I have lots of tasks to complete. I had to practice these skills over the summer constantly as there were a plethora of other interns trying to learn as well and then again when I came back in the winter, had to adjust to a smaller intern cohort, transitioning from being one of fifteen to one of only three interns. I think after this specific internship experience, I would love to pursue the Science Technology Engineering and Policy minor and hope to get another internship experiencing the design side of civil engineering. I would love to push the bounds of my learning capabilities to really make a difference so, while it wasn’t required for this job, I think it allowed me to start thinking about getting my Professional Engineering licenses and possibly a master’s degree.

Last modified: 05 May 2024