And So it Begins...

Hey everyone,

So I have now found myself in Southern California, and I love it here.  I am staying with my cousins in Pasadena and just generally enjoying my time.  However, I am working in Orange County.  For those unfamiliar not caught up on their California geography, this is a 1-1.5 hour drive with little to no traffic, and a 2 hour at best at rush hour.  Luckily (kind of), on my way there in the morning I start driving at 5:30am so there is light traffic, on the way back, well I make good progress on my book on tape and make some phone calls (In car bluetooth, so don't worry I'm not breaking CA law) to pass the time.  I don’t like to complain though, I have an amazing opportunity at Fluor, and any way to take advantage of that is completely worthwhile.

Speaking of my time at Fluor, I had a great first week there.  I am shadowing engineers working on revamping a refinery.  Currently I am mostly working with Process Engineers (A type of Chemical Engineering), and next week I will also be observing some Mechanical Engineers.  Everyone is extremely helpful and is more than happy to give advice as well as answering all of my questions.  Furthermore, I have been very lucky with the amount of chances they are providing me to observe and learn about the industry.  I have been included on an incredible amount of meetings.  From what I can tell, there are three main levels of personnel on the project: Project Managers, Disciplinary Leads (Process, Mechanical, etc.), and Engineers.  I have been able to attend meetings that include all three levels.  I began with a team meeting between the Process Engineer lead and the Process engineers, and also attending the Project Manager meeting as well as the team meeting between the Project Managers and Disciplinary leads.

From these meetings and my time there so far I have been able to learn not only about engineering itself, but a lot about the overall industry and how business is conducted.  The day of the Project Manager meeting and team meeting between the Project Managers and Leads was on the same day.  This allowed me to see the flow of information from Managers to the Leads, and I was most impressed with how fast problems were dealt with.  For example, there were a few obstacles the Managers were debating how to solve in their meeting, and when the team meeting came a few hours later they had decided how they would like the problem dealt with, and only a few hours after that the Engineers were already working down that path to the solution.  

Overall, I am learning a lot in a very short amount of time.  I will share more of what I have learned that is industry specific in the coming weeks.  I will not be disclosing any material specific to the project for obvious reasons, but I will take what I have learned and apply it to my more general terms of wanting to learn how refineries will be changed and advanced in the future.  

Oh, and while this is a few weeks late, it still needs to be said: Go Broncos!

Stephen