I-15/Limonite Ave Interchange
Improvement Project
Amanda Thompson
Hello, am Amanda Thompson. I am currently a graduating senior at Cal Poly Pomona and I cannot wait to take what I have learned at Cal Poly and apply it to my future work and career. Most of my experience thus far is in general civil engineering and land development. Most of my experience stems from my year and a half internship with Southern California Edison where I worked within their Substation Civil Engineering group. The Substation Civil Engineering group provided civil support to the various electrical engineering groups designing and/or maintaining substations. Recently, I switched from the public utility to private engineering consulting firm. I currently work for the company Stantec where I work on the community development team which does general land development work.
My main goal for the future is to earn my Professional Engineering License. In August of 2015 I took my first step toward this goal by earning my Engineer in Training Certification (EIT) and will take my next step in June 2016 when I earn my degree in Civil Engineering.
The biggest lesson I learned from the project is that engineers cannot live within their bubble. I was the Environmental Engineering Team Lead for the project and going into this role I was expecting that it would be more along the lines of researching endangered species and ultimately saving the whales. However; I could not have been more wrong, the environmental portion of a project takes into account the surrounding community and how the project will impact and effect the surrounding community. As an engineering students, we are so immersed in the technical aspect of the project and how to solve the problem by the most efficient and practical way possible without considering many outside factors. This project has taught me that the environment surrounding the project is one of the most important aspects of design because it ultimately determines whether the project is feasible.