A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 54 & 55

Day 54

I waited until today to post about yesterday (Tuesday) because I ended up not spending the whole day at work. I started the day preparing for a meeting with the city admininstrator and other directors in the city. Normally my supervisor, the director of public works, goes to these meetings. But since he was out, I was going to attend for public works. So, I had talked to the other superintendents to get updates on all the work and projects going on in their divisions. Fortunately I wrote it all down because about 8:30 I got a call that my 16-year old kid in high school had a fever, and they asked I come pick him up. Because I knew I would have to stay home with him (he has Down Syndrome so I didn't feel comfortable leaving him alone with a fever), I was able to give my notes to the street superintendent so he could attend in my place.

The rest of the day was spent home with my son. I did get the chance to watch a couple presentations online – one of which was given by a friend of mine, Paulette Robinson, who works for the National Defense University. The link to the event is http://about.extension.org/2011/10/05/nevc2011-outstanding-professional-development-free-avoid-travel-hassles/. Even though it is now over, I think they will have all the talks available for viewing sometime in the near future. If you are interested in social media or the use of 3D immersive technology, you might be interested in checking them out.

 

Day 55

Today at work was very busy! Of course being off yesterday didn't help. Throughout the day I met with a few of my staff to conduct performance evaluations. I also had a meeting with other staff members to review a draft of our Downtown Plan. This meeting lasted through lunch and into the afternoon. We had to finally "adjourn" the meeting until another day because we still have so much to discuss. After I left that meeting, I ran over to the field meeting we had set up for our culvert project. The project engineer was there with our technician and the contractor. It looks like they are probably going to start work next week.

SUPER DUPER CONTRACTOR RATING!

I did get something in the mail today that was somewhat interesting to me so I figured I would share it on this blog. Every now and then a contractor sends us a letter introducing themselves and asking to be placed on a bidder's list. We don't really have a bidder's list so I just file the letter. In this case, I was a little surprised to get a letter from this particular contractor because they were around about 30 years ago when I used to work for the city of Aurora. So I figure they are fairly well known in the area. Anyway, they included a Certificate of Eligibility from IDOT to show they are prequalified to do any work we would be bidding out. What was amusing was that they have a "SUPER UNLIMITED" rating! Just what does that mean? How can you get any more unlimited than "Unlimited?!" 

Certificate of Eligibility (IDOT) - K-Five

Share