Senior Projects

For the first week of our project, I spent every day in the office of CSI Commercial Services Inc. at their St. Louis location. This is the head branch for the entirety of the company and therefore handles the majority of the finances and organization. I spent the first two days working with president, Brad Earnhardt and learned the bird’s eye view of the entire operation. The following days I spend with three other faculty members including vice president, Shelly. During these visits, specifics filled in the initial information Brad had given me to help give me a better understanding on how all the departments were connected. I am excited to visit two more of their locations in May to compare management and communication.

For Thursday and Friday I have been putting cushions on pool furniture, replacing the faucets in the bathrooms, checking in on resident’s shower head, going through trash and recycle on some of the main floors, watched over the light guy as he checked chandeliers, and I have cleaned an outdoor sculpture outside the main lobby. Overall I would say that it has been a good first week.

I have been shadowing Lou Filla while he has been doing IT work and I traveled to 3 different schools. The Fulton School, Rohan Woods, and St Francis Borgia Grade School. During this time I have been working and learning about general technology problems such as WIFI, wiring, and security. When I went to the Fulton School our job was to set up the chrome books for ERB testing. So we went to the lunch room closet and took out all of the old Chromebooks and chargers and brought them upstairs to the meeting room. After that I worked with Lou Filla’s son Noah Filla and we had to brainwash all of the laptops and login with the ERB account to add the ERB program onto the Chromebooks. To make sure everything was working properly we had to update the Mac IOS to the most recent date and that probably took the longest amount of time. After everything was completed and up to date me and Noah put all of the computers onto a cart with chargers so they are ready for the ERBS next week and the week after.

The next day I went to Rohan Woods and that day was a little bit more laid back. Part of IT work can also be managing wires and cables for people to make things easier and more convenient. Lou was checking the internet to see if everything was connected and working properly. While he was doing that I was organizing the electronics in cabinets, under desks, and behind shelves. Basically organizing keyboards, USB’s, and overall just making it easier to find everything when they need it. I working with Noah while doing all of this and we ended up making everything “perfect” or at least that is what they told us. Zip Ties were probably the most helpful that day because it just held all of the wires together making it easier to see what we were doing.

The following day I went to St Francis Borgia Grade School. This was probably my favorite day this week because it was a really old style school building. Under some of the buildings there was structures built and unfinished from the 50’s or the 60’s that still had walls of stone and it was really cool to see all of that. But that wasn’t the point of going there what the goal at St Francis Borgia was. The goal was to check all of Lou’s wire closets he had set up to see if they were all working properly and organizing it to make it look nicer. Ultimately we were trying to free up more space for when they were ready to add more electronics to the school. I did not get hands on with this stuff but I still got the chance to learn what everything was and how all of it worked.

My favorite part about this week was being able to travel to all of these places. I got to see things I had not seen before while driving around on roads I have never drove on. Knowing about the places I went to makes me want to go back and check it out in the future on my own time, just to explore and see more of these cool places.

On Wednesday I had my first show at The Sheldon. This was a comedy show so I was told it was relatively easy in comparison to music shows. (the comedian was David Cross if you wanted to know). I helped with set up for the show and for the VIP event after the show. As well as helping with ushering and scanning tickets. I also talked to a lot people with a bunch of different types of jobs. This helped me get a look into what type of jobs I may be wanting to get once I finish college.

For the first few days into my senior project it has been what I had expected. I have been shadowing my boss (Steve Krueger) around seeing what he does in his field of Building Engineer. Steve makes sure that throughout the day the residents are happy and that the machinery and staff are working properly. I have also shadowed Steve’s maintenance crew (Jeff and Fred). They do whatever Steve tells them and they take care of calls from residents like if their A.C doesn’t work anymore they go out and fix it, and if they can’t they call Steve who will go up to the home and help. Throughout these three days I have, helped Jeff and Fred on the pool deck by carrying pool lounge chairs and replacing the bathroom toilet valves and faucets, been to two work meetings, manually switched the chillers on the roof, changed batteries on grills, fixing the cooling tower on the roof so it stopped overflowing, fixed leak in water heater, and I have checked on residents and helped them get into their storage units. I would say that the worst part so far is waking up at 5:30 every morning.

This week was spent at Tri-Co again shadowing Ryan Smith (superintendent) and Micah Roufa (project manager). I sat in on more meetings and helped with various projects around the site. It had been really interesting to see the types of issues that come up around the site and how Micah and Ryan choose to deal with them. While these issues are a pain and sometimes delay the project, I think they are what keeps work interesting. On Friday also participated in a company golf tournament and that was pretty fun. Overall it was a good week.

Week 2 I only worked 1 day at the front desk, since I drove to boulder on Tuesday and got back Sunday.

Week 3 – For week 3 I have been dealing with fielding a lot of questions about the flooding. When the state park floods. We have to close the campground for a while until the flooding clears. I learned what day we would be reopening and had to tell people when that was. I also had to deal with some, people who wouldn’t look at their tickets and drive to the state park without realizing it was closed. Since we couldn’t have them in the park, we had them drive to another nearby park until the park opened again, and tried to refund them what we could.

I have been working the front desk for a while at Meramec state park. I spent the last 2 days of my first week at Meramec state working the front desk at the visitors center. What I have to do at the visitors center is answer the questions of the people coming into the visitors center, and help them as best I can. Most of the questions I get are asking for directions to the campsite, or a tour of the exhibit. I can help with all of those kinds of questions. The questions I cant help with are the ones about booking or canceling a campsite. If I cant help with a question I have to ask some of my supervisors or transfer the call to them.

This week was spent shadowing Micah Roufa again. I did most of the same things as last week but now that I know more stuff about the site I am able help out more. I also drove a Bobcat this week which was pretty cool. Overall its been a good week. I only have a four day week this week because of districts and a two day week next week because of state and project presentations so I am doing my best to learn what I can in the days I have left.