Busy Summer Intern

Busy Summer Intern

Zhibin Zhao

EGRMGMT 551

Sep. 29th 2015

Executive Summary

This article briefly introduces the Corporation in which I interned and some of my engineering background that helped me get that position. Next, I introduced the basic information about the LT project that I participated in CIECC. Followed by that, some major difficulties I met in my intern are displayed and discussed. Finally, I go through some of the deliverables after the intern.

Personal background and the Organization

My undergraduate major was power engineering and I mainly focused on power generation, transformer, power transmission, delay protection, and power consumption. In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of power system design and construction, I interned at China Electric Power Research Institute (CEPRI) in the summer of my sophomore year. It turned out that it really helped me grow.

In June and July of 2015, I secured an internship at China International Engineering Consulting Corporation (CIECC) in China, an organization that focuses on engineering consulting for clients mostly from China mainland. CIECC is one of the most distinguished state-owned enterprises in the area of infrastructure construction consulting in China. Almost all national infrastructure projects with financial budgets over 2 billion yuan have to get permission from CIECC before starting construction. After collecting statistics and information from both construction company and experts, which usually takes two to three months, CIECC publishes a synthesized, extremely important report that operates like a rulebook for construction companies to follow.

Fortunately, a family friend is the transportation manager at CIECC and he helped me to secure my internship. He was looking for students with some background in both engineering and business, since it was a customer-oriented position that required communicating with and providing professional guidance to clients. After a short interview, they realized that I was the right person since I had an engineering background and strong communication skills.

Project Description

The project that I participated in was basically a consulting project on railway construction. It started in Liaocheng, a city in a northern province, and ends in Taian, another small city in a northern province. The LT project covered, a length of 430 kilometers and had a financial budget of 4.25 billion yuan. This railway should have been constructed and finished two years ago but was experiencing some major difficulties during the construction process. Therefore the construction company had to stop and reanalyze the feasibility of the project before moving forward.

As I mentioned in the Personal Background and the Organization section, almost all national infrastructure projects with financial budget over two billion yuan must get permission from CIECC before starting construction. LT Project was not an exception. CIECC received the LT Project in May of 2015 and I took over this project in June after I joined CIECC.

There were two major difficulties with LT Project. The first was going over budget.  The construction company realized they were over budget and therefore requested to increase the financial budget by one billion yuan. The second issue was that after doing a more careful field investigation, the construction company concluded a maximum slope with 0.3% grade would be more economical on construction cost and time instead of the previous suggested 0.2% grade.

Generally speaking, the construction company merely did things for their own interests. Therefore, in order to get these requests approved, CIECC, together with several other experts acting as an independent third party, had to investigate before giving suggestions and conclusions.

Project Assessment

During the internship at CIECC, I was responsible for two major areas. The first was meeting preparation, which included sending invitations to both experts and the construction company, contacting experts, finalizing their travel plans, booking round trip tickets. I was also responsible for, communicating with the construction company about meeting plans, serving as a meeting secretary, securing a smooth operation of the meeting, and recording opinions from both sides. With information and resources being collected, the second part of my responsibility was to analyze those materials and produce a rough draft to my supervisor as the CIECC’s report.  

Typically, these meetings are held once a month to update the latest progress, to ensure that the construction company is heading in the right direction and to make necessary corrections of the construction plan if needed. Therefore, these meetings are of great importance.

Meeting preparation should have been a simple task, but when taking actual factors into account it became difficult. Unlike in the United States, booking a ticket in China not only requires a name but also requires an 18-digit identification number. When boarding a train or a plane, they will check your information. You will not be permitted to board if one digit is incorrect. Moreover, experts come from different cities and I needed to pay attention when booking each ticket. Further, some experts were in their 60s, 70s or even 80s and I have to reserve cars to fetch them to and from the airport or train station. Just one mistake would ruin everything and I had to be extremely careful.

What I noticed is that however careful I tried to be, there would always be imperfections. There was one incidence that left a strong impression on me/hard for me to forget. I sent a message to experts on a Saturday saying that they were supposed to arrive on July 22. The 22nd was the next Wednesday, but in the message I only referred to it by the date.  All the other seven experts understood perfectly, but one expert called me on Tuesday and said: “I’ve just arrived, where are you?” I was totally shocked! I reserved a pickup service, hotel service and everything else for Wednesday, not Tuesday. My supervisor and I did our best and made a few phone calls to get this problem settled down. I understand that people make mistakes all the time. What really surprised me is that later when we met, that expert said he thought he was supposed to arrive on the second day of the week and he blamed me on not making this clear to him. I’m proud to say that I’m a careful person, but since then, I began to realize that carefulness is never enough and there is always a possibility to do better.