When townships have engineering questions they can’t answer, want to create construction plans for the future, or need to know the cost of an operation, the local government turns to their township engineer to enlighten them. My summer internship placed me in a position to help township engineers and learn about their day-to-day responsibilities.
Specifically, I was an intern with a firm based in South Jersey called Remington and Vernick Engineers. Headquarters is home to many departments: MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing), Water/Wastewater, Landscape Architecture, CAD team, Survey, Construction Inspections, and Municipal, which I was part of. The Municipal group was headed by a number of licensed P.E.s (Professional Engineers) who were the Project Managers (PMs) for the department. These PE/PMs were registered township engineers for municipalities throughout South Jersey, often taking on multiple towns each. Engineering support for townships is busy work, so the PMs have a team of Engineering Technicians (Engineers in Training, aka EITs, or junior PEs) to pick up tasks and execute projects. While some tasks are simple, many design projects will take weeks to prepare, followed by weeks of review and often months before our plans would be sent to a construction contractor (a separate company supervised by RVE to construct the project we designed).
The focus of my department, Municipal, was roadway projects for municipalities. Each year, towns and cities commission the reconstruction and repavement of roadways in disrepair, using a mixture of city funds and state government grants. As an intern, I learned how to participate in the initialization of this process. A Project Manager would task me with a road, along with its township and boundaries. From there I analyzed the dimensions of the road and details about its surroundings, such as right-of-way, curb, driveways, utilities, and vegetation, in order to calculate a construction cost estimate. Often I would even be sent out on field visits to these roads to personally assess their state and take photographs. After the cost estimate, I completed an online application for state aid that included creating a location map, scribing a scope of work, and further data about the road.
My internship at Remington and Vernick was a great work experience and a wonderful learning experience. The whole group was made up of young engineers who were approachable and dependable. I leaned on their experience and asked a lot of questions, and that helped me learn more than anything else. Always take advantage of resources at internships, and always ask questions. The most fun things were group activities. Monthly the office would provide a BBQ lunch for everyone, which was an opportunity to slow down and meet my coworkers. Additionally, all the interns company-wide went on a field trip to a pair of bridges and got a behind-the-scenes tour of the bridges’ mechanisms.
In sum, internships are a serious time commitment but well worth the learning experience. As a freshman or even a sophomore, it’s easy to feel unqualified or unskilled, and that you shouldn’t try until you know a lot more. I’d say give applications a shot, start the internship search early, don’t be afraid to ask questions and learn, and there’s always a way to help out.
