Friday, August 08, 2008

AYEA Student / Shadow

I got a phone call a few weeks ago from a girl, Megan, who had seen my name on a USGBC event announcement (advertising really does work!). She asked if I thought our local Green Building group would be interested in attending a Career & Leadership Fair put on by Youth Employment & Parks (YEP) in partnership with Alaska Youth for the Environment (AYEA).

While explaining what the whole thing was about, she also mentioned that they were trying to gather together some businesses who would let the kids “shadow” one of their employees for the day, to get an idea of what the real world is all about.

I forwarded her request to the chair person as well as to a few other people who might be interested in the job fair, and also passed on her request to my boss about the job shadowing thing.

KPB Architects was quite happy to open their doors to Anchorage’s youth, so two girls came and spent the day with me. Melissa and Desiree, both high school students, arrived here at the office at 9:30 in the morning and we started our big day together.

I had arranged for representatives of each of our “departments” here at work to meet with the girls and give them an idea of what we do and how we do it. Their first meeting was with our Landscape department. Tamas was busy, so Ed came in to the conference room and spoke with them for about an hour. He was very interesting to listen to, and the girls seemed to be actively listening to him. They asked questions, at least. That’s always a good indicator.

The next meeting was with our Interiors department. Melissa and Marie took us back into the interiors library where they had a bunch of things laid out to talk about. I told people ahead of time that the focus should be on Green Building and Sustainable Practices, so the materials were along those lines.

It just so happened that the office had a Brown Bag scheduled for lunch that day, so the girls got to sit in on a design discussion on a school we’re doing for one of the bush communities. It was an eye-opener for them, I think. They didn’t realize just how much thought goes in to a building like that.

Desiree had to leave after lunch for her tennis practice, so Melissa and I headed off to the job site on our own. The Native Hospital is putting an addition on to their clinic, and I had worked on the drawings that designed it. As part of my on-the-job training, I get to go on weekly site visits to see the building get constructed, and was quite happy to bring my student shadow along with me.

I had Okayed it ahead of time with Billy, the General Forman on the job, so he met us at the job shack with all the safety gear (a hard hat, a fluorescent orange safety vest, some safety glasses, and the like – the one thing we should have had but didn’t was ear protection) and we headed out from there. He took us thru the construction site and up onto the parking garage next door so we could see the "bird's eye view". It was very interesting!

When Melissa and I got back to the office, we met with our Marketing department and got to take a look at some of the projects KPB has done in the past, and learn about how to “sell” a building concept.

Last on the list of meetings was with one of our intern architects. Mathew spoke of his experiences in school and at the job. He showed some examples of work he’d done, and talked of what his plans were for the future.

By this time, poor Melissa was on over-load. She kept saying, “wow… I had no idea…” Hopefully, she enjoyed her time with us.

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