For my practicum, I worked at the Manhattan University Physical Plant as an intern and employee for Aramark Facilities Management. Manhattan University is a small university in the Bronx, New York and contracts Aramark for their facilities services. The facilities services that Aramark provided for Manhattan included carpentry, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, custodial services, pest control, painting, res-life maintenance, locksmithing, and energy generation/management. I split my time between the Physical Plant, an office space where the Aramark employees and Manhattan University technicians worked out of, and the rest of the campus where I walked around and interacted with co-workers, clients, and the infrastructure itself.
I found this site and site supervisor through a connection and casual conversation. I found this site during the spring of senior year of high school. As someone who wanted to study engineering, I began talking to people that my family knew in my neighborhood who worked in related industries. At one of my brother’s baseball games, I spoke with Mr. Annunziata, a parent of one of my brother’s teammates, who worked with Aramark at a different site. After discussing my goals of being an engineer, he connected me with Dominick Maltese, the Aramark general manager of facilities at Manhattan University.
For future SGC scholars who are looking for a practicum site, I would recommend using your connections to their fullest advantage. Even if an individual does not work in the field that you are interested in, they may know someone who does. Eventually, you will find a connection to an industry you are interested in. Secondly and more importantly, I would recommend discussing your interests with passion and taking initiative. A future employer is more likely to take you in as an intern if you prove that you are both committed and reliable.
During the two summers I spent at this site, I spent most of my time as the Service Response Manager. I was the person primarily responsible with delegating tasks and responsibilities to our team of technicians. The work flow went as follows: I received a call on my office phone or viewed a work order request submitted online. I would then write up an official work order, which included the location of the problem, the details of the problem, the requester’s contact information, and the technician who should address the problem. I then would print out the work order and put it up on the board in the office for the technician to address the issue. Eventually, when the task was completed, the printed work order would be returned to me with the updated status of the issue. I would then close the work order in the WebTMA computer system and mark it as completed. Several times throughout the day I would leave the office to walk around the campus to follow up on work orders that were not completed and to inspect completed work. I would also communicate with my supervisors and the team of technicians frequently.
In addition to these everyday tasks, I worked on developing a brand new preventative maintenance program for the university. Preventative maintenance (PM) is the act of routinely performing maintenance on equipment items to prevent them from becoming damaged in the future. Due to staff shortages and budget cuts, the university did not have a PM program, which presented a safety hazard and caused concern for the university clients. My job was to communicate with technicians to create task lists and schedules for over 400 equipment items, including generators, chillers, air handlers, and more. I made a spreadsheet that listed every single equipment item in every single building on campus and their respective PM tasks and schedules (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.). I created a separate document that detailed the instructions necessary for every single PM task and printed out the thousands of pages within it. I organized these printed documents by building and by calendar month, so that the team had a binder that detailed exactly what needed to happen, where it needed to happen, and when during the year it needed to happen.
In order to properly delegate tasks and develop a preventative maintenance program, I needed a strong understanding of the equipment being serviced. I learned the mechanical engineering behind HVAC systems, boiler rooms, electrical circuits, and other mechanical systems. I also learned how refrigerants are utilized to create air conditioning during the summer time. I used Aramark’s WebCTRL computer program which allowed the user to inspect the different components of an air conditioning system, including the condensers, evaporators, ducts, and more. These experiences helped me learn a lot about the mechanical engineering behind various systems that are necessary in all modern buildings.
Working at this site helped me learn a lot beyond science. The biggest takeaway I had from working at this site was the management experience I got at such a young age. Due to staff shortages, I was given a manager role very early on, which allowed me to develop leadership, communication, and project management skills. I have gained a further appreciation for the role that communication and project management plays in developing scientific and engineering systems. Without proper oversight, scientists and engineers cannot work effectively. This also has led me to become more interested in becoming a project manager for an engineering project as a future profession. I am also more involved in more leadership roles at UMD thanks to this experience. Overall, the role of project manager is something that I believe that I am skilled at and I have a step above other competitors due to the experience I had working at this site.
Overall the practicum and poster presentation experience was a great opportunity for me to develop my skills in both engineering and management. I learned a lot about myself and grew as an individual in many ways.