Jordan Forry
School: Ohio State University
Major: Civil Engineering
Company: Kokosing Construction Company, Inc.
Internship Dates: 2017-05-08 — 2017-08-18
My name is Jordan Forry and I am a Civil Engineering undergrad student at The Ohio State University, graduating in May 2019. I’ve been given the opportunity to be a co-op at Kokosing Construction Company this past summer, close to home for me in Columbus, OH.
Growing up, I always liked to build things. As a high school student, I chose to take a few hands-on classes such as woodworking and introduction to engineering. I thoroughly enjoyed these courses, especially when I got to design and create a paper roller coaster and take it to a competition. I also worked one summer for a local contractor to help build houses, which was a good experience. Based on these interests, I decided to major in Civil Engineering and do something related to construction.
The summer after my freshman year at OSU I worked as an intern for the Ohio Department of Transportation, in the materials testing labs. This helped me gain knowledge about asphalt, but I decided that I wanted to work for a contractor, at least for a summer internship to see what it was like. Thankfully, my experience at ODOT helped me obtain a co-op with Kokosing in the asphalt estimating and project engineering group. Going into the summer, I wasn’t sure what to expect, I had no idea how much went into estimation and project management even just for asphalt paving. Throughout the term, I gained a ton of knowledge in both bidding road projects and managing the financial aspects of the construction. I have really enjoyed my time at Kokosing thus far, both working in the office and going out in the field to experience paving operations. It has also been great to learn about both estimating and project management in the same term.
What results did you achieve on the internship, and how did you exceed the company's expectations for your role?
During my co-op semester, I was slowly given the opportunity to do most of the things the project engineers do. I started out mostly doing takeoffs on “Blue Beam”, a file for taking measurements of PDF’s, and learning how to use HeavyBid. Three weeks into the term, I was given the chance to create an estimate for a City of Columbus paving project, mostly on my own (with estimators/project engineers answering my many questions along the way). For that estimate, we were the low bidder, but by the third estimate I worked on, I had won my first bid for a township road maintenance project. This was one of the most exciting events I experienced over the summer and it was satisfying to hear our number as the lowest at the township hall bid opening.
Over time, I learned more and more about our construction process. After originally focusing mainly on the estimating, I started to learn more about how we carry out the projects. I was given the opportunity to use the estimates I had worked on to set up budgets. In addition, I became more involved in tracking production rates, setting up force accounts, adjusting cost/profit projections based on change orders, and more.
I was even able to give helpful input into projects, such as a highway repair project where we faced a problem. Due to repairs being added onto the project, ODOT needed to make a few changes to make sure the final contract did not go more than $100,000 above the original contract. To do this, they wanted to take some of our asphalt work, and do “spray patching” instead. My supervisor gave me the task of sorting through which repairs we would want to eliminate and give up to the spray patching subcontractor (as ODOT was leaving this decision mostly up to us). After analyzing our original bid and looking deeply into the repairs, I came up with a solution that would be most efficient for us by eliminating lower productivity repairs, while also helping ODOT stay within the $100,000 threshold. This is just one example of the many times that I helped create a solution to a problem faced on a project.
One of my other contributions to the company was using my abilities in Microsoft Excel to make quantity tracking and subcontractor payments less difficult. Using complex functions and PivotTables, I made life easier for my supervisor (probably for years to come), and exceeded his expectations.
I enjoyed the amount of responsibility I was given in the sense that I felt treated like new project engineer/estimator, not just a student assistant. I also enjoyed going out in the field on occasions, and helping with milling cleanup, raking, or setting up cones for the nightly zone. It was always nice to meet some of the workers out on the paving crews.
What did you learn in this internship that will affect your life in a positive way?
Through this internship experience, I have gained a lot of insight into how the construction industry works. I learned that estimating and project management is more than just making profit for a company, it’s about acquiring work to keep hard working people employed and finding ways to maximize efficiency in the field to help maintain the company’s success. I think I mainly learned this lesson after going out in the field and talking to the laborers and operators. Everyone I talked to was nothing but nice to me, and I acquired a new perspective. I wasn’t working hard just to maximize the company’s profit to make myself or management look good, I’m doing it to make sure those hard-workers keep getting paychecks.
Another thing I learned through estimating, is that you must get used to losing. As a competitive person, this was a little hard for me at first after losing my first few bids. Given some time however, I started to realize that one contractor can’t win every project. It can be draining to put a lot of hours into bidding a project along with other estimators, just to find out that the company didn’t get the job. The important idea for me though, was to focus on the projects we did get and to move onto the next project up for bid. Bouncing back from defeat is important in order to achieve success.
Overall, whether my final career choice ends up being in estimating, project engineering, or design engineering, I’ve learned this summer that construction is about more than just the final profit margin, it’s also about the process of getting to the final result and the people involved.
How were you involved with safety and/or quality during your internship, and how did that change your perspective on construction?
While working for Kokosing Construction Company, it became evident that safety was one of the company’s main focuses. With the slogan “Lead with Safety”, it became ingrained in the culture to take care of the workers and try to minimize incidents. Upon arrival, I didn’t fully understand the importance of safety, but after hearing about a few incidents involving cars hitting flaggers and fingers being cut off, I quickly realized how crucial it was to focus on safety.
My experience with safety involved going out in the field and being involved with “MAP” (Morning Action Plan) and “OHA” (Operations Hazard Analysis) meetings. At Kokosing, the goal of these two items is to discuss every morning with the workers what will be accomplished for the day, and to make sure any safety hazards are pointed out. Through all of this, I gained a new viewpoint on construction in the sense that it’s about more than just getting work done, it’s also about keeping workers safe.
Since I was mainly in an office setting, I did not have a lot of responsibility in terms of quality control/assurance in the asphalt paving operations. However, I did get to learn a lot while I was out in the field on occasions, and tried to pull as much information as I could from the foremen. Although asphalt paving isn’t the most complex construction work, I learned one important lesson about the quality of paving – don’t rush through the work and try to take shortcuts, because doing a good job is cheaper than repaving a bad job.
After reviewing www.IBuildAmerica.com, tell us what I Build America means to you?
The term “I Build America” means more to me than just construction zones and eye sores to the average person. It’s about improving the infrastructure in our country in a safe and effective manner. The American Society of Civil Engineers graded America’s infrastructure with a D+ in 2017. This shows just how important it is for our country to focus on rebuilding roads, bridges, buildings, dams, and more. If we ignore the fact that our infrastructure is in bad shape, we will see more and more incidents like the one on Interstate 35W in Minnesota (2007) when a bridge collapsed, killing 13 and injuring 145.
One project that I found especially fascinating on the I Build America website was the I-10 Emergency Repair project. Near Indio, CA there was major flooding after heavy rain, and this undermined the abutment of a major bridge, causing 1/3 of the bridge to collapse. Approximately 24,000 vehicles drive over this bridge every day, and closing the bridge would’ve caused a 3.5-hour detour. Because of this, the strategy was to keep traffic moving over one side of the bridge while repairs happened on the other side. There were also some obstacles involved such as extreme temperatures and being located over an hour from any support, equipment, and materials that all had to be dealt with in a small time-frame of completion. Jobs like this truly show what I Build America means, it’s about keeping normal life moving, while also focusing on safety. It takes a lot of management and coordination to get a job like this done.
I want to contribute to the cause of rebuilding America by ensuring that work is completed safely and managed properly. If not for the work of design engineers, estimators, project managers, and everyone involved in supervision, our country’s construction process would fail.
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