“Can we do this? Should we do this?” These are not uncommon questions for me to ask myself; although the context is much different this morning. Typically, I ask myself this question as I am contemplating having one more IPA late on a Friday night after a long work week. Well it’s probably only about 9:45pm, but that’s late for me nowadays. Inevitably, I sadly decide to forego the IPA (which would have made two for the evening) because our 1 year-old is going to wake me up at 5:45am tomorrow morning, and I do not want to wake up that early with a headache…wait where was I? Ah yes, “Can we do this? Should we do this?”
It’s an early Monday morning in the middle of May. I am scrambling some eggs for breakfast sandwiches for my sons, and my mind wanders. I am thinking about our summer internship program. A year ago, it would be unfathomable to even remotely consider not having a summer internship program, but this is not a typical year. We pride ourselves on providing a great summer internship experience: project work, site visits, client meetings, marketing events, entry level seminars, the intern design project (IDP), happy hours, the wellness challenge, and other fun summer events. With each passing day, it seems more and more like our entire office will be working from their homes. I am unsure of how we can deliver the internship experience that we promised that our awesome group of interns deserve…wait what’s that smell? Dang…I burnt a bagel!
Flash-forward to today, it’s the last day of August, and I have a much different feeling this morning. From start to finish, we brought our internship “A-Game” worthy of being mentioned along with other great performances from equally talented organizations such as the 1974-1979 Pittsburgh Steelers or the 2005-2008 Pittsburgh Steelers. In total, sixteen talented interns joined our “office” this summer, and from day 1, we made sure they hit the ground running. Before any of them could even role out of bed and grab a cup of coffee, our incredible IT team was setting them up with Slack accounts, Microsoft 365 accounts, configuring their personal computers to access machines in our office, and setting up countless other programs and accounts they would need for the summer. Before they could even ask, “Who is this Justin Anders guy, and how did he get access to my laptop?”, they were whisked away to an onboarding presentation led by Katrina, Tamara, and Aaron to get them prepped to enter KPFF. If you are curious what the onboarding presentation is like, watch the scene from The Matrix where Morpheus gives Neo the red pill…it’s exactly like that except our pill is blue. Before any of them realized what just happened, they were virtually ushered to their Teams with guidance and support from an assigned advocate. During their first week, they would become fully integrated with the team and dive right into project work.
Around the third week of June, all the interns had joined us, and we started the Entry Level Seminars. Spearheaded by Allen Au, a small army of KPFFers (Aaron, Katrina, Reza, Kyle, Lin, Neha, Rodrigo, Andy, Riad, Melissa, Professor Pithey, Professor English, and some guy from Las Vegas) taught classes about our organization, drawings, coordination with civil engineers, Revit, and seismic design. All classes were taught via Zoom and condensed in a one-week period. As the Entry Level Seminars were winding down, we also started our Intern Design Project (IDP) led by Paul, Joe Lio, Saleem, and many multiple liaisons from each team. Over a six-week period, with the support of the IDP leads and liaisons, all the interns were able to analyze and design a central utility plant structure with a steel framed gravity system and a concrete and CMU shear wall lateral system.
As the summer wore on, we also started to find ways to incorporate experiences that have been typical in previous summers. We started “bringing” interns to our virtual meetings with clients, contractors, and project teams (If we had to be miserable on never-ending Zoom and Teams meetings, why shouldn’t the interns be miserable too?) which provided opportunities to observe real-world project coordination. We were also able to coordinate site visits to Kaiser Downey, Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center, Apple Grove, and some of our other projects.
If I am being completely honest, my biggest worry about our internship program this summer was that it would really lack the fun and social engagement we typically enjoy every summer. Fortunately, my fears were put to rest. Even though we were all apart, we still found ways to engage and have fun with each other too! Juan, Rose, Raivyno, and the Community Practice group put on some really fun virtual happy hours! Who new sitting in front of my laptop with a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale playing an online game could be so fun? The Wellness Challenge led by Jeanne, Vanja, and Allen was a big hit too! It was a great way to interact with and get to know people outside of our engineering teams. I learned that Matthew Cristi works while riding a stationary bike, and that Carmen Chen can do more burpees than the rest of Team 2 combined!
As I reflect on all this, I am impressed, thankful, and proud. I am impressed by the technical capabilities of our IT group, engineers, and support that made having a completely remote internship possible. I am thankful for all the hard work our staff put in to make our summer internship experience interesting, educational, and fun. Finally, I am proud of our 2020 intern class. Under difficult circumstances, they fully integrated with our team, learned from our talented staff, and made contributions to our projects. I wish all of our interns luck going back to school to finish their degrees, and I hope to meet them all in person in the future!
Now for our next challenge…facilitating virtual first grade for my son! Who’s with me?! What’s that? Every parent for himself/herself? Well, it was worth a try.
