Well… the Detroit office hasn’t asked me to leave yet, so I feel like the internship has gone great so far! But really, all joking aside – I am roughly halfway through my internship with Alberici and I have not regretted my decision to come to Detroit for a second. In fact, my experiences thus far have reinforced everything I was told to expect at the career fair and in my interviews. Time has flown by so fast that I find it hard to believe that I have already hit that halfway point.
While my activity on the job site has slowed, I have been able to get into the office more the past couple of weeks to help on an automotive project bid. This has been a very eye-opening experience. As most people in the construction industry know, you learn most from experience and not by reading books. It has been a great experience putting some of the estimating skills I have learned in class to good use as well as learning about the estimating process under Marek Kollar. Not only have I been able to complete meaningful work while in the office, but I have been able to interact with the trades which has allowed me to be exposed to all facets of the project. The slowed field work has not taken away from my experience one bit. In fact, it has enhanced my experience by exposing myself to the procurement phase of the construction process.
This internship with Alberici has also increased my exposure to the business side of construction – an aspect that is rarely touched on in undergraduate programs, but an area that I, just like Alberici, am particularly interested in. I have enjoyed the opportunity to sit in on a multitude of conference calls with project teams and clients. These have allowed me to see how Alberici conducts business on a day-to-day basis. This goes to show that Alberici is committed to teaching its interns by giving us meaningful responsibilities – very far from the corporate stereotype I feared coming to work for such a large company. I am very much looking forward to the intern summit in St. Louis here in a few weeks where I will get to meet interns from all areas of the Alberici Corporation and share our experiences!
Reid is an intern blogging about his experiences working at Alberici’s Detroit office this summer. Click here to read his first post.