ForumElectric: Electrical forum, Electrical engineering, electrician, power plant, energetics, wires

Student1 · Country: Joined: 13 May 2007 Posts: 1

You could read all my background stuff or you could just skip down and help with some suggestions
Background: I'm going into 4th year of my EE Program. I was hired to be an EE Summer Student with MTO (Ministry of Transportation Ontario). I am fairly weak with programming, but they seem to use Microsoft Access and AutoCAD, both of which should quicker to learn compared to some of the other programming languages in Uni (Anyone have any good eBooks/PDFs?).

EE is a small section (civil being the majority) in MTO. I believe they deal with related lighting and transformer work (all having to fall under standards). A lot of their CAD work is done through consultants, but not entirely sure what they do (more later). I'm also working with another summer student who is in Comp Sci (more of an IT background, so he'll help with the majority of Access work).

First Week: Introduced and adapted to the filing system and helping them organize some of the older workload to help clear their cubicles. They've assignment a small project dealing with a File Management System, which they would like me to improve on (but I have yet to work, as I did not have computer access yet). But by week end, I felt like I hadn't gained much knowledge of processes I could use transfer with experience and hoped that I would be given related assignments/work. The Electrical Designer sent me and the other student a memo setting up meetings with the other Project Managers the following week, so I would like to be prepared in what I want to say.

MAIN POINTS to bring up in meetings
-I am here to help you organize (filing, compact related G/WP material, etc) and make your work more manageable for post summer term. But I hope you can assign me some work related to MTO procedures/standards whether it requires taking the time to review OPS and/or other procedures. I could also help with number crunching. I realize I will have to work my way up to gain trust/respect in handling of assignments and responsibilities.

-Programming isn’t really a forte, but I will put a strong effort into learning the Microsoft Access and AutoCAD software, so that I will have the ability to help with different assignments.

-What types of work did you assign to previous EES Summer Students? Was it because you didn’t know what level they were capable of performing, or didn’t take the initiative to ask you for work?

-Possibly be assigned low priority work to gain experience (slight learning curve to adapt to the MTO processes, standards and electrical related material).

-Job shadow (possibly on a lighter workload day, view the inside related electrical engineering work inside MTO. So as to learn about the engineering field/business outside of a classroom setting)

-Also looking to be brought to some job/work sites, so that I can view how projects are managed, discussed and view other related things (timelines, contracts, consultants).

THANKS