I have ten questions for an Environmental Engineer; needed for a school project?

Question

Hi, I have a school project due on Friday and it includes having to interview an engineer. I chose to interview an Environmental Engineer, and I have ten simple questions that I wish to ask.

1. How and why you did you become involved in environmental engineering?

2. What do you do in a typical day at work?

3. What do you enjoy most and least about your job and your career?

4. What are some of the most interesting projects you've worked on in your career?

5. How important are computers to your work as an environmental engineer? Do you use any specialized programs? If so, what are they and what do they do?

6. Is there a lot of pressure working as an environmental engineer?

7. Does your job require you to travel a lot? If so, where have you been and why?

8. Are most of your projects very interesting and immersing, or is there a lot of tedious work?

9. For the most part do you work in teams or individually?

10. What is the hardest part about your job?

Thank you very much,
Dani

Answer 1

1. How and why you did you become involved in environmental engineering? - I did not start in Env. Eng. I was in the Oilfield and ended up doing environmental work after starting work doing asbestos sampling.

2. What do you do in a typical day at work? There are many fields of work for Env. Eng's. If you work as a consultant, your job entails: Finding work so you can have a job. Working on reports for clients, meeting with state regulators to discuss projects, going out in the field to conduct assessments or other surveys. Most of what a consultant does is considered "soft engineering".

Other types of Env Engs work for plants, or companies and go around collecting data to make sure they are in compliance with federal and state regulations.

Occasionally, EEs will be able to do some hard engineering by designing systems to comply with either wastewater or air permits. Most of this work is usually contracted out to a consultant.


3. What do you enjoy most and least about your job and your career? I specialize in remediation of groundwater where sites have had a release and they need to clean it up. This is very satisfying because you know you are removing hazardous materials from water which may harm people or the environment. The least: you have to go out everyday and sell yourself and your services to your client. This means that they are about to spend a huge amount of money that they usually do not have budgeted. The biggest job I ever worked on spent about $2 Million before the factory ever pumped the 1st gallon of water out of the ground.

4. What are some of the most interesting projects you've worked on in your career? Cleaning up petroleum releases using Dual Phase Vacuum Extraction Technology. Our company pioneered the development of the DPVE in the southeast for UST sites. Prior to DPVE, cleanups were taking several years. The first one used in our state (and the region) cleaned up a site in under 3 months. Check out www.mkenv.com for information about DPVE.

5. How important are computers to your work as an environmental engineer? We use them for word processing, autocad and to conduct some modeling.

Do you use any specialized programs? If so, what are they and what do they do? Yes: WordPerfect and Word for word processing, Excel for spreadsheets, Autocad for drawing, Groundwater modeling programs such as surfer and others.

6. Is there a lot of pressure working as an environmental engineer? Yes. As a consultant, you are working to appease unreasonable regulators and penny pinching clients at the same time. Money does not grow on trees and regulators do not care about how much money it costs a client to comply with the regulations. We have to balance the two as much as possible.

7. Does your job require you to travel a lot? If so, where have you been and why? I travel about 50% of the time. Most of my work is in the region as you have to go where the work is. If you do not have any work, you will be unemployed. The better you are at doing what you are doing, the farther out you can sell your services. But, each state has different regulations so you have to be an expert in all states at the same time and you need to be able to convince your client that even though you may cost more than a local guy, you are worth the money and they should pay up.

8. Are most of your projects very interesting and immersing, or is there a lot of tedious work? It has been said you do not have 10 years of experience, but 10 years of the same experience.

9. For the most part do you work in teams or individually? Both. Unless you are a one man company, you have to delegate your duties to others, trust them to do the job in the right manner, tell you the truth when you ask them a question.

When working with a client, many times they get scared about you telling regulators about their dirt. So, you have to investigate heavily into each and every project.

10. What is the hardest part about your job? Getting paid in a timely manner by the client and making sure that they do not stiff you. In our state, there is a fund to reimburse gas station owners for the work we do. We have to make sure that they do not take the money that they get and blow it in a casino.

Answer 2

Environmental Engineering Questions