Building a Career from Home Renovation to Construction Site

Following graduation, I moved out to Phoenix, AZ to begin my career as an Office Engineer with Holder Construction. Holder Construction is a major construction management company that has offices nationwide and is also where I completed two of my co-op blocks at RIT. Currently, I am working on a data center project, which as of recently has become Holder’s main focus as a company, due to vast growth in the tech industry. As an Office Engineer, my responsibilities include on site trade coordination and management, coordination of material design, fabrication, delivery and installation, ongoing interaction with field supervision, and management of cost and design issues (change orders, RFI’s, submittals, document updates, etc.).

I would attribute the most important skill of construction management to communication. Whether it is verbal, nonverbal, written, or visual, every day I must communicate effectively to perform my job. This includes writing emails, leading or speaking in meetings, taking phone calls, talking amongst my coworkers, marking up documents, and several other parts of the job that require communication. Throughout my time at RIT, I learned the key foundations to communication, starting with something as simple as professors mandating professional email etiquette for classes. Group projects also necessitated thorough communication with partners that all maintained a unique personality, in an effort to accomplish a shared end goal. These projects would normally end with a presentation, forcing each member of the group to practice public speaking, which I employ daily now in my career. In addition to this, problem solving is a core part of construction management each and every day. When problems arise amongst subcontractors, a lot of the time, they immediately bring them to the construction management crew looking for answers. So, it is our job to understand them, dissect them, and then come up with a rational solution that works. At RIT, the Civil Engineering program consisted of classes that challenged me as a student, where professors would throw problems our way for us to wrestle with and to work through. I distinctly remember spending hours trying to work through homework questions, struggling my way through, but looking back now, I understand why it was so important and how I truly developed critical thinking skills through my experience at RIT.

I love the excitement that my current job brings with Holder, with every day in construction being different. Each morning, I wake up with no clue as to what I will encounter that day, whether it will be new people, new problems, new solutions, or new ideas - every day is unique and I love that aspect of my job. I discovered the Civil ET program at RIT through my cousin who had gone through the program several years prior. He had a very successful start to his career in the construction industry and I wanted to follow in his footsteps. Growing up in Rochester, I also had heard great things about RIT as a whole, and I viewed it as my dream school since I was a kid. As I became increasingly closer to my college years, I did a thorough amount of research and was intrigued by the Technology designation to the degree, as that would mean more of a hands-on approach to the curriculum, which I greatly appreciated being more of a visual/kinesthetic learner.

Freshman year, I had numerous professors that I immediately noticed were deeply invested in my education. They stayed late, hosted consistent office hours, made themselves available, were always willing to answer questions, and showed that they truly cared about me both personally and professionally. Through this, I became more trusting of my professors and began going to them for advice. I had a variety of professors that encouraged me to take advantage of my co-ops over my time at RIT. Because of this, I decided to pursue opportunities with different companies in different career paths of construction. This allowed me to get a full-circle view of construction, as I was able to experience both the civil design side and the construction management side. Following these co-ops, I could then make an educated decision on what I wanted my career path to look like based on what I had enjoyed and thrived in the most. Ultimately, I attribute this to the professors that encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone.

I grew up in the Rochester area, so I knew about RIT from a young age. RIT was the school that I aspired to attend since I was in middle school, when I attended RIT’s Imagine event. To this day, I distinctly remember walking around amazed at all the student’s inventions, and I could not help thinking that one day I wanted to be one of them. In terms of the College of Engineering Technology, I was intrigued by the practical focus of the degree over the theory aspect, which to me seemed more suited to the real-world application of a college degree. Based on my experience going through the program, that is exactly what it turned out to be, and I see that more and more each day working in the construction industry.

RIT’s career service department (Maureen Thompson in particular) helped me tremendously to become a marketable candidate for companies that were recruiting. Specifically, I reworked my entire resume with the career service advisor from CET during my early years at RIT. As I continued to progress, I was able to reach out to my career service advisor to refine my resume with my skills/experience that needed updating. Furthermore, prior to career fairs or looking for a co-op/ internship, my career service advisor helped guide me on what companies I should reach out to based on the interests I communicated at the time. They then proceeded to start a conversation between myself and those companies they deemed would be a good fit, which often resulted in a follow-on interview. The career service department at RIT was instrumental in me landing co-ops and eventually now my full-time role with Holder, which I am incredibly grateful for.

While in high school, my dad and I took on the construction project of finishing our basement. We framed all the walls, did all the electricity and plumbing, hung all the drywall and performed all of the finish work. It was through this project that I developed a love for construction and hence wanted to orient my career in that direction. In high school, I also completed a brief internship with a local general contractor, which further confirmed my desire to enter the construction industry. For any high school student that enjoys building things, seeing tangible results, problem-solving, utilizing critical thinking skills, working on a team, and contributing towards the greater good of society - construction is a great career path and RIT’s Civil Engineering Technology degree is a great program to educate yourself so you can thrive in the industry.