Davis is a Project Engineer with Knutson, a Minneapolis-based construction company. His role is heavily involved with all pre-construction aspects of the process, from job prospecting and bid writing to product procurement and subcontractor selection. Davis tells us that interested students should have at least a couple of internships under their belt before graduating, as on-site experience is just as valuable as a degree.
Transcript
My name is David Salen, I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in construction, commercial construction and I am currently working as a project engineer at a general contractor in the Twin Cities. So at my level there is a lot of, there's a lot of pre construction work so basically what we do is we find out jobs that are about to launch in the Twin Cities Metro Area, we will put together a bid, make bid calls, get subcontractors input, put together this formal bid, bid the project. If we're awarded the work then we'll buyout the project put together contracts, put together a project team and then from that point we actually start the project. So in my case, when I started at Knutson I was working out at the airport so there'll be submittals which is basically information on all the products and materials being used in the project itself. And then from there on forward basically the project managers and the project engineers, their job is just to ensure the project gets built. A lot of that is procurement, making sure that materials are on site and basically just feeding our field crew, people that are actually building the project and making sure that their lives go smoothly and they have all the materials and the subcontractors that they need to complete the job. And from there, once the project's complete there's all sorts of closeout information and attic stock for materials that might break down or extra parts. So we create a deliverable and get all that project closeout to the client and from there we'll collect retainage and make final payments to our subcontractors and after that it's typically smooth sailing. I do some miscellaneous stuff, so I just got back from Nashville on Friday to go down there and look at a prospective client and some work for someone that we've worked with in the past. So it really just depends but I would say your average project engineer, in the full swing of things, will be working on one project but in kinda the off season, in the winter, they might have two or three things going on, depending on the size of the job.
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