“Hi, my name is Esther, and I’m an incoming third year civil engineering student.”
This past summer offered me many chances to introduce myself to others. Whether with a person who has been at KPFF LA Structural for more than a decade or with a new hire on their first day in the office, someone is bound to come up to you and say hello. The environment is so welcoming and friendly, and I’m thankful I had the opportunity to intern here for the summer. As soon as I started, people came to my desk to greet me, and I was also able to meet some new hires who started the same week I did. Since then, I’ve learned how intentional and genuine KPFF LAS is in wanting to get to know people. Not just our basic introductions, like which school we’re going to or what year we are going into, but also what we like and what we do outside school and work. As a marketing intern, I’ve learned how essential connecting with people is in this industry.
KNOWING TO COMMUNICATE
Every week is filled with meetings. As part of marketing, I was invited to join in on meetings with fellow support staff on Mondays, LA Civil Marketing on Tuesdays, principals on Wednesdays, and LA Structural Marketing every day.
To help our Support Staff better support staff, we met weekly to discuss new tasks and events, follow up on previous ones, and check in on how everyone was doing. We also covered any office-wide announcements to ensure everyone was on the same page.
Each week, we met with our sister office, LA Civil, to follow up on any projects on which LA Civil and LA Structural were collaborating. In addition, we had meetings with our principals to get caught up on any new projects or developments on existing projects. And finally, we had daily marketing meetings, which allowed the marketing staff to update one another on our tasks. Through these marketing-specific meetings, I learned how to sell KPFF’s services when making proposals for potential clients and advertising on different platforms.
After talking with the engineering interns, I realized there was just as much communication within other departments. The office has multiple conference rooms, and if you walk around the office, you are almost guaranteed to stumble upon someone making calls to clients, partners, etc. KPFF recognizes the need for communication and continues to find and provide resources and opportunities to optimize our communication effectiveness.
KNOWING HOW TO COMMUNICATE
Not only is the act of communicating essential for producing good work, but so is knowing how to communicate. During our time here, all interns and new hires had various training modules to complete. One of the most memorable and valuable was KPFF’s Crucial Conversations training. KPFF gave us access to books, videos, and discussions to help us better communicate in difficult yet crucial situations. This training also allowed us to get to others in the office we don’t work with daily. We were paired with learning partners and table groups for activities to practice our new communication skills. I appreciated that KPFF LA Structural went to the lengths it did (and still does) to provide all staff – even the interns – with access to these resources because they realize it advances workplace productivity.
KNOWING WHO WE’RE COMMUNICATING WITH
Finally, I learned it is essential to know who you are communicating with. Along with Crucial Conversations training, KPFF LAS has everyone take the SDI assessment and training course. Through this course, I could better understand myself and my peers and learned how to communicate with them based on their SDI assessment. We reviewed each person’s results and all possible combinations to see what environments allow us to optimize communication and, thus, productivity in the workplace.
KPFF also provided a broad spectrum of fun activities, such as the Office Olympics and the Wellness Challenge, allowing us to meet coworkers outside our teams.
