May 19, 2011

Last Day

Today marked my last day at Brandt, which I did a lot and learned a lot, too. This morning I shadowed a mechanical engineer, who is a financer. His job is to estimate the engineering of a job and put a cost. He showed me his project of TCU’s plumbing addition. Then we read AT&T’s request for two new chillers. From this point he drew out the layout of the air cooling system when there is a chiller in the basement and there are two air conditioners on the roof known as an open system. Then he explained the basic equation that the company has simplified for mechanical engineers to utilize to calculate GPM (gallons per minute) that would be necessary to overcome the pressure of the outside atmosphere. Once again British units are used. This job is not necessary doing an exact design but estimating for the purpose of getting a price of a certain job taking in other considerations such as materials, the work being done, the time it will take and the hiring of a number of people to complete the job. He also gets to on project sites just to verify the job is being done accordingly to plan to make sure the cost a job does not go over budget. I got to do some reviewing of duct work for him. I circled two sizes of the duct that seemed funky and wrote “check sizing criteria” and from what plan sleeve it was. I got read a written design plan of a building for Bank of America.  

Then I saw some duct work being done along with diffusers being designed for Parkland Hospital by another mechanical engineer who is a woman.  She designed the duct work and added diffusers to each floor of the Parkland Hospital. She taught me how to use the ductulator for sizing duct properly. For example, if the supplier is supplying less than 10,000cfm then I would look on to my ductulator and use 0.2 100ft/friction or if it was greater than 10,000cfm then I would use 2000fpm and use even numbers for sizing and vice versa you can use sizes to verify that the cfm is correctly calculated. Therefore, I was able to verify some sizes and she would do everything on AutoCAD. Then she cleaned up the diagram for interpreting purposes.

Lastly, I finished up with the tour of the Brandt facilities. I got to see parts of the symphonic drainage. Brandt is a LEED company so they focus a lot in saving energy and conserving water. When it rains the rain water will be utilized in the company’s facilities. I got to enter and see the cooling system they use water to cool off heat from outside to supply and then it returns some of the heat back outside through a duct but it mostly uses the same air in a cycle. I saw some of the pipes and duct at the warehouse.

I have enjoyed interning at Brandt because I got to shadow different fields of engineering which is what I exactly wanted since I’m not sure what type of engineering I would like to study in college.  I got what I wanted from this intern which was shadowing the different types of engineering for my career exploration senior project. This intern has given me a big eye opener of what the outside world has to offer for engineers. I met a couple people with engineering degrees this week but they have a job that has completely nothing to do with engineering, which they highly enjoy. I am glad I interned at one of the best places to work as mentioned in the Dallas Morning News of 100 Best Places to Work.

Ductulator

Siphonic Roof Drainage System

Plumbing Pipes

May 18, 2011

Mechanical Engineering

I cannot find the words to explain how much I enjoyed today.  I went to two project meetings with Chris, a mechanical engineer I shadowed for the day. The first project meeting was held at the Scottish Rite Hospital the meeting consisted of John the owner of the hospital along with two architects, two plumbing engineers, and three electrical engineers, the contractor from BEC and Chris. The purpose of the meeting was to finalize the project of the Scottish Rite Hospital Central Panel a new building that would connect to the existing building. However, certain issues are presented that had to be discussed such as where would the new sanitary pipe connect or would the pipe just go underground. They came to the conclusion that they would connect the new sanitary pipe with the existing sanitary pipe of the hospital. Therefore, the plumbing engineering and architect had to make changes on the sleeve plan diagram and the plumbing engineer took the plan with him in order to redo calculations. Another issue that was brought up because John who is the boss of the project wants the generators to be manually fueled but the electrical engineer insisted for that to be automatic, so they have to figure out that issue. Another, inconvenience was where the new generator and transformer would be placed.  Everyone is trying to figure out this problem especially the mechanical engineer and the electrical engineers due to budget costs and requirements they must meet. As a result, Chris is chosen to do a proposal that is to be presented to John on June 8, 2011. I learned from this experience that it can be difficult to work in a project team with other people from different companies especially when there is a budget in play. This meeting lasted about four hours.

We rushed to the second project meeting which was held at the project site of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. Before the meeting I met Chris’ partner Taylor, who is also a mechanical engineer. At the meeting who consisted of other people. At the meeting the sprinkler system and fire exit system, and the action of the dampers were discussed. Chris and Taylor are given the task to design a HVAC for a voyager that will be a ride inside the museum that should last about seven minutes and hold up to thirty people.  Chris had shown me his calculations before the meeting started. His calculations implied an estimation about how much air was need taking in consideration of the heat. I learned that in the engineering will use the British metric system.  Taylor and Chris presented their idea and will have a design by Friday. After the meeting I meet the project manager and the vendor for the project. I got to see the project site of the museum. I had a great time shadowing a mechanical engineer and seeing a project site.

The Architecture Design of the Perot Museum of Nature

Construction of museum as of today

Some models of the interior design of the museum

May 17, 2011

Electrical Engineering

Today I shadowed an electrical engineer named Chuck who was working on many projects. He was finalizing the electric circuits for the new Jesuit High School’s gym facility. He explained the electric design on a sleeve plan, which is just a huge printout of the design on paper. There were a couple of changes he had to do which he modified on AutoCad.  He then needed to enter wall sensors into the design but he had to assure that the number of sensors did not exceed the amperage of the electric panel that is located on the end side of the design. Therefore, he taught me the main equation used in electrical engineering which is Amperage= Volt/ Resistance. I learned that lower the resistance the bigger the wire and the amperage would be bigger and if the resistance is high the smaller the wire and the amperage would be less. He did this according to electrical engineering conditions set by the state. On Autocad he pointed out the lights that served as back up lights.  As one of the conditions says that a wall sensor cannot be placed where there is only one light. Another project we worked on was analyzing a field report for Lufkin Hospital and pictures taken of transformers and generators. First, I was given the report and I highlighted the important details such as physical damages such as oil leakage and measurements of the spaces between generators and bases. From this point we went through it together and verified what had to be modified and we figured out that some measurements violated the electrical conditions set by state laws. He pointed out the different parts of the generator such as switches, duct buses, and piping. As an electrical engineer one must make sure that the generator does not give too much amperage or that amperage needed exceeds the amperage supplied.  As a result, he must write a report to the hospital stating what is wrong and what has to be done.

Another project we worked on was a room for ALOFT in which the diagram consisted of a restroom and where appliances would be plugged in. However, we had to add receptors to the room to estimate the total amperage to make sure the amperage will not exceed the supply of the generator. The diagram ended up having 17 receptors that were not indicated for the appliances labeled in the room. The appliances were a tv, a copier, a fridge, a microwave and a dvd. After that we entered the data into a excel sheet in which calculations were done. He emphasized once again how the equation: amp= V/I  is important but that it was basic. This only took a breeze; once it was done it was emailed to the person who is asking for this project. I was taken to the BIM room which has 2 screens and one smart board, which is utilized when a project is, completed all the designs of every systems are brought together in the AutoCAD program to view where systems collide to fix them before construction actually starts to help save money and time. I enjoyed today because I gained knowledge of electrical engineering, which has me more curious than before.

May 16, 2011

Today was my first day at Brandt a company specialized in building and I was given a tour guide to show me around the building. I what I found interesting is that the building had an amazing design but the building also helped out the environment. For example, some of the walls were already there and the building had a server that cycled the cool air and warm air. There parking lot was from light color concrete because that would help observe less heat and their plants do not require much water. I will continue the rest of the tour tomorrow. Then I shadowed a plumbing engineer who had to figure out the sizing of a plumbing sleeve. Each level of a building had its own plumbing due to toilets, lavatories, medical gas, showers, faucets, water fountains, and kitchen sinks that had to be connected with the other level above and below.  He also got to pick out with toilets and faucets to use.  The plumbing for the hospital he had to identify the gases by code to make sure that the pipes do not get intertwined with other pipes because it could cause damage and contamination. Plumbing has to work around other systems such as the sprinkler system.  He had diagrams that identified levels and even individual rooms that would contain some sort of plumbing. Once he determined the sizes of the pipes and the location of the pipes he drew the small scale pipe on the diagram then entered it on the computer. He utilized the program AutoCad which used for designing and one could view the building, the plumbing, and the duct work in the third dimension by navigating.  This program helps view if the plumbing will collide with other systems and if so there would be a red cloud made to indicate that there had to be a modification. He was working on a new hospital building and the new gym for Jesuit high school. I learned about symphonic plumbing which is a drainage system utilized to get water from the roof to the cross space under the building by using less piping and not providing a slope like the gravitational drainage system .

Examples of AutoCad