The Alberici Career Training (ACT) program provides new project engineers with insight into Alberici’s various business functions and how they operate together as a whole. Our employees spend time in different departments including Estimating, Scheduling, Project Controls, Marketing, Legal and Safety, where they work one-on-one with key stakeholders to better understand our company.
Some of our new Project Engineers, James Beatty and Spencer Litzau, recently began the ACT program. Over the coming months, they’ll be sharing their experiences with us. First, let’s meet them:
James Beatty was born and raised in St. Louis. He attended DeSmet Jesuit High School before going to the University of Missouri – Columbia, where he studied Mechanical Engineering. He was an Engineering Intern at Alberici during the summer of 2014. He hired on full time as a Project Engineer in January after graduating from Mizzou in December 2014.
Spencer Litzau graduated from Saint Louis University with a degree in Civil Engineering and has been working at Alberici for 8 months. He worked on the Olmsted Dam project before starting the training program.
James and Spencer are spending the first two months of the ACT program in the estimating department. Here’s what they’ve had to say about the experience so far:
Last week we submitted the bid for the Fargo Water Treatment Plant. Getting first-hand experience with the estimating department helps us appreciate all the work that goes into winning a project before construction even begins. Working with the estimating department teaches the importance of working with a team and looking over every detail of a project.
While working on the bid we were all assigned different specification sections. After receiving our assignments, we needed to read the specs and preform take offs for the material that pertained to each of our sections. Next we started calling subcontractors to see if they wanted to bid on the project. While doing this we created Bid Analysis Sheets to help us break down the bids. This was done so that we could have the most accurate number possible and know what subcontractors would be giving us on bid day.
Bid day provides great practice for working under pressure to make sure a job gets done on a deadline. It was exciting, hectic and even gratifying. This experience reinforced the value of good preparation and communication.
We can already see the benefits that understanding the estimating process will have in helping us become better project engineers out in the field.