During my time on the Summer Consultants’ team, I had the amazing opportunity to be part of multiple projects and attend a handful of site visits. Having the chance to help work on various projects gave me a good perspective in the range of work that Summer handles on the daily. From renovating barracks and historic structures to replacing a trash compactor circuit, you never know what to expect. I found that getting to experience a large variety of projects made my internship experience very exciting and provided me with even more opportunities to learn.
The first site visit I had the chance to go on was to see Building 61 at Ft. McNair to collect additional information for the project. Building 61 is a large-scale historical renovation project that houses a massive number of electrical systems. When working on renovations, it’s important to consider if any systems can be reused and what needs to be retained. For example, Building 61 has two large lanterns outside of its entrance that are to be repaired and cleaned for the project. As an electrical team, we also want to reduce the number of penetrations through the old walls to maintain structural integrity. By the time of the visit, I had worked on the project for a significant number of hours, so it was really thrilling to see what I had been contributing to in person. Being able to help maintain such a historical structure gave me a great feeling of pride in the work Summer Consultants does. Valuing historical structures is incredibly important, and our work aids in ensuring that happens.
Later in the summer, I went on survey with two members of my team, Ryan and Evelyn, to investigate a newly assigned project. The site was located on Loudoun County’s NVCC campus, and Summer was tasked with the MEP for a new engineering lab space. The interesting part of this project was that the new engineering lab was being built from a crawl space! Upon arriving on site, we surveyed the existing electrical and mechanical room before it was time to enter the crawl space. We climbed up a ladder in the mechanical room, before swinging ourselves through a small hole in the wall to enter the space. There were no lights inside the crawl space, so we used flashlights to document what was existing in the room. Although the project tested my fear of heights, it was incredibly interesting to see the process of surveying a new project, to later putting together the drawings and calculations for it.
My second to last week, I was pulled from my desk unexpectedly to go on what would be the last survey of my internship. Upon leaving that morning I didn’t even know where we were going! I quickly learned, however, that we would be driving to see a project at Ft. Belvoir. We efficiently surveyed one of the building’s electrical and mechanical rooms to compare what we found to the existing drawings. When working on older projects, drawings may be 30 or even 40 years old, making them slightly unreliable. Just in our short survey, we discovered an electrical panel shown in the drawing was completely missing in the actual space. Being able to adapt to unexpected changes on a project is an important lesson I learned over the summer that will help me be a better engineer.
An internship with Summer Consultants will require you to expect the unexpected. You never know what secrets a renovation project holds, challenges you will get to tackle, or if you’ll be asked to maneuver into a crawl space. Regardless of the task, your team will always be prepared to answer all your questions and help give you the best experience. I learned an incredible amount about the MEP industry as well as technical software skills throughout the summer. Overall, I am incredibly grateful for my internship experience, and I am excited to enter the industry once I graduate.
