Fifteen interns joined our Los Angeles Structural engineering team in the summer of 2019. For perspective, this increases our staff by approximately thirteen percent for a three-month span. When I share this with people outside of our organization, the immediate response is often, “Fifteen! How do you keep them busy all summer?” or “I’m sorry, did you say fifteen?”. Typically, people react this way as an acknowledgment that training and keeping interns busy can be perceived as costly and impactful to an office. There is no doubt that we see our summer intern program as impactful, just in a different way.
For starters, our internship program has a primary objective: positively impact the beginning of young people’s careers. On day one, each intern is welcomed into one of our seven engineering teams and given two documents: The Intern Packet and the The Intern Syllabus. The Intern Packet is a 28 page reference manual crafted by several of our engineers to be utilized as the interns start integrating into their project teams. The manual covers everything from local jurisdictional review agencies and common construction/design lingo to analysis and design guidance. The Intern Syllabus summarizes everything the internship will encompass: our Entry Level Seminar series covering topics such as civil/structural coordination, drawing development, and introduction into using Revit; our Intern Design Project which allows interns to analyze and design a structure from start to finish; lunches with our Principal group; and industry experiences such as site visits, client meetings, and industry events. We are finding our biggest challenge is squeezing all of this into just three months!
Our efforts to provide the most educational and valuable intern experience possible were repaid by the lasting impact our interns have had on our staff and projects they have worked on.
In total, the interns made positive contributions to over 100 projects this summer. Just as important, we made lasting personal connections through multiple social events including happy hours, KPFF Office Olympics, Summer Wellness Challenge, and the KPFF Summer Picnic, to name a few. We are excited to say several of our summer interns will be joining us as full-time engineers in the winter, and we hope to remain connected with all of the others.
I am proud to be part of an organization that invests in future leaders in structural engineering, but I am even prouder of what our interns have accomplished this summer. I look forward to seeing their career trajectories, and to the impact they will have on our industry.
