So Much More To Learn

Hey everyone,

My time in California has continued to be fantastic.  Outside of work I have spent time with my cousins in Pasadena.  We have also gone hiking near Laguna, and went indoor rock climbing the other day.  All in all, it’s been fun to just explore the surrounding area.

Picture From Laguna

Okay but back to my research.  So it was brought but that in the commotion of trying to finalize where I will be working for this research project, I never mentioned the exact topic of my research.  Sorry about that, but here it is: I hope to find what current improvements are being made to the oil refinery process to increase productivity.  Well, lucky for me, the work I have been doing at Fluor are on projects that are revamping refineries to improve productivity.  

My first week (last week) was dominated by trying to get a grasp on what was going on around me.  I did a lot of research and asked a lot of questions, and by the end of the week I was able to generally understand the discussions going on around me.  I’ve had to learn quickly, and every time I feel I gain a footing I’m shown that I still have SO SO MUCH to learn.  I love that though, and the epitome of that was my second week.

In my second week at Fluor I was put on another project that is working on revamping a refinery.  They are at an earlier stage in the project, and the engineer I am working under graduated from Colorado School of Mines. On this project I have been given work to edit documents and drawings that will be used to plan the project.  This has helped me to learn the process directly, and has challenged how fast I can learn.  

During my time at Fluor, I have also had the incredible opportunity to have meetings with many different people at many different levels in the company.  Through these meetings I am able to gain insight into the difference roles of a mechanical and process engineers at Fluor.  In short the process engineers are more responsible for planning the project as a whole, and the mechanical engineers are responsible for implementing it.  This means that mechanical also has more business and logistical responsibilities.  These are by far not the only two groups working on making the project work, but they are the two I am most interested in myself.  I still do not know which one interests me more, but the biggest take away for me is that regardless of the choice I make, it will not be a bad one for me.    

As far as information pertinent to my project, I am working on organizing what I have learned, and will be writing about that in the coming weeks.

Stephen