Summer Internship Report 2015

Richie SteinmetzCEM Class of 2018

Richie Steinmetz

Purdue Construction Engineering and Management

Summer Internship Report 2015

(Prepared 8/6/15)


Table of Contents1) Resume (to be included at a later date)

2) Summer 2015: Holder Constructiona) Project Overviewb) Week 3 Internship Check-Inc) Week 6 Internship Check-Ind) Week 9 Internship Check-Ine) Week 12 Internship Check-Inf) Final Self-Reflectiong) Information Release Form

3) Miscellaneousa) List of References


2) Summer 2015: Holder Constructiona) Project Overview

Company: Holder Construction Company

Location: Atlanta, GA

Mentor: Karen Matos/Adam Krouse

Mentor Job Title: Preconstruction Senior Manager, Preconstruction Manager

Mentor Phone: Karen: (770) 988-3335, Adam: (770) 988-3326

Mentor Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Owner/Architect and Other Major Partners/Subcontractors:

May 2015-July 2015

I worked on the Riverwood 200 project which was a brand new office building in northern Atlanta. The owner for this project was Slade Brogdon and the architectural firm for that project was Cooper Carry.

July 2015

I was put on the team for Project Eagle which was a data center in North Carolina. The owner of Eagle is confidential information at this point but the architectural firm that is responsible for designing Project Eagle is Corgan Associates.

Project Description:

The Riverwood 200 project that I worked on for the majority of the summer is a new 13-story office building that is part of a development right across the street from the Holder Construction national headquarters here in Atlanta. A lot of eyes were on our team as Holder will be moving into the top 3 floors of the new building so it was a very important project. Project Eagle is a project that had the chance to work on for a month towards the end of the summer. The project was a data center in Kings Mountain, NC with a few unique components that I was able to learn much about (i.e. access flooring).


Job Duties:

My job duties for the summer were to coordinate a variety of trades on different projects and keep them updated as new drawings were released and as the preconstruction process continued. I contacted subcontractors daily and evaluated quotes and was reporting back to my team leads/other team members on a regular basis, as well as helping out with odd jobs here and there throughout the office. I played a small roll in weekly meetings when I developed reports on all of my required action items for the past week. I kept track of due dates and I was responsible if one of my subcontractors did not provide me with needed information on time without a valid excuse. I also performed value analysis on some aspects of the job to help lower the cost of the job so as to help get the project back under budget.

Goals for the Summer:

Gain as much experience as I possibly could in the preconstruction field.

Learn everything that I could learn about the construction process to see if this is something that I think I would want to do for the rest of my life.

To learn what life is like working 8 to 5 every day.

Other Pertinent Information:

My coworkers that were in my pod were my day to day mentors throughout the summer, they were the ones whom I directed most of my questions. They were extremely helpful and always willing to take time out of their day to help me with things that I needed. It was an incredible experience and I can’t wait for more experiences like this in the future.


b) Week 3 Internship Check-In

Date: June 14th, 2015

Three Task Descriptions:

1. One task that was very prevalent for me these first three weeks was attending and taking notes in training courses throughout the day for my job in the future. These classes were very essential in my learning about how to do my job and why we do certain things we do. I still have a ton of things to learn, but I feel that I have a decent knowledge base now.

2. Another task that I was told to take care of in the beginning process of my internship was to do a “mock bid evaluation”. This is basically just taking information that different subcontractors from the same trade have submitted to the company and evaluating them side by side to making sure everything that is needed in the contract for a particular project is included in their quote. If not, we are to plug in values for these missing items based on a number of different variables so we can get the values as accurate as possible.

3. For a third task during the first three weeks of work was just getting myself acquainted to how the work day progresses and all of the systems that we use to complete our work (outlook, helix, Bluebeam, etc.) and how I should get around the office. I also made it a point to meet the people that I would be working with during the summer. I found these tasks just as important as the ones above.

Goals for Next Three Weeks:

1. Get officially put on a project and start really helping out the team and not just doing odd jobs here and there if people are too busy.

2. Start building relationships with the different subcontractors that I am going to be working with in the future.

3. Continue to learn about the processes of the job and the workplace and learn how I am supposed to do my job in the most efficient way possible.


Company/Project Information:

Section: Office Information

Holder HQ is located in Atlanta, GA and this is where I am stationed at. I am on the fourth floor of the office building which has 5 floors with Holder Construction occupying the top two floors. The office staff is very large and consists of 100+ people here in the Atlanta office with many more located around the nation. The office is divided up into sections that all aid in the process of getting a project completed. The sections include: preconstruction (me), MEP, operations, human resources, interiors, BIM and business development. These different sections of the company all have different chains of command but the chain of command in the preconstruction department goes intern>office engineer>engineer>senior engineer>manager>senior manager>director>vice president>senior vice president. Now there are many different responsibilities that we as engineers have to take care of, one of them being creating and tracking RFI’s. We do this in preconstruction by simply going onto our website that we use to operate and navigating to the specific project’s page and leaving an RFI on the panel where the architect/owner is able to view it at their convenience. We also take care of estimates for each project. These estimates are handled about once every month or two months for a project depending on when the different sets of drawings are released by the architect. These pay estimates are put together through examining every detail of the project and referencing those details to the quotes that subcontractors have supplied to us and then we analyze the differences and come up with an accurate number for each trade to plug into the estimate for that round of drawings.


c) Week 6 Internship Check-In

Date: July 6th, 2015

Three Task Updates/New Descriptions:

1. I was assigned to the Riverwood 200 project at the beginning of this three week period I was assigned to handle doors/frames/hardware, millwork and landscaping/hardscaping. The first step I took to manage these trades was to get in contact with the different subcontractors that we were reaching out to for budget pricing on the project. I created project specific checklists for each of them and sent those documents out to them and finally evaluated the responses that I got back.

2. Another task that I was assigned was to completely scope out the different trades that I was responsible for on Riverwood 200. I had to go over the plans in detail and really get a good understanding of what needed to be picked up where and what material it was. I reviewed the specifications on the project as well to grasp all of the different aspects of my trades.

3. For the landscaping/hardscaping on the Riverwood 200 project the set of plans that we had were extremely vague and lacked detail so I called up Ruppert Landscaping (the subcontractor that we were in contact with to help budget the project) and set up a meeting with their representative to go over the plans in detail to develop a clear plan of action moving forward.


1. I would really like to continue to evaluate the different trades and quotes that I have received efficiently.

2. I want to be an integral part of putting together the project estimate and play a beneficial role in whether our new office gets approved or not.

Accomplishment of Last Check-In Goals?

All of the goals that I listed in the previous check in were completed to my standards. It was great to get put on a project and really start diving into being an important member of the team.



Section: Schedule

The schedule for the Riverwood 200 project is actually very unique. The project started in 2008 and was temporarily put on hold but then was picked up again January of 2015. Thus the scheduling was restarted, but accelerated somewhat due to the fact that we already had reached out to most of the subcontractors and the project was generally the same as it was back when it started. The overall schedule for the project is shared with the team through the online site that we use to coordinate all of our efforts called Helix. All of our project files get posted there so everyone has access to them 24/7 should they need them. We also go over the purchasing schedule/work schedule in our weekly meetings to make sure everything is still on track. The current work schedule for the project is based off on a 10 hour a day, 4 day work week.


d) Week 9 Internship Check-In

Date: July 26th, 2015

Three Task Updates/New Descriptions:

1. I helped put together the final proposal for this set of drawings for the Riverwood 200 project. To do this we had to look into all of the drawings and develop a lot of value analysis on account of the project being about 5 million dollars over budget. We stayed at the office until about 8:00 P.M. every day of the week in order to get this proposal in order on time. I also had to make visual clarifications so the owner of the building could see why we were over budget and what we could do to bring the cost down a lot.

2. At the beginning of this section of my internship I was assigned to a new project called Project Eagle. This is a data center in Kings Mountain, NC that we were handling for a confidential client. I reached out to drywall/ACT contractors and fire protection contractors for bid pricing on the project and I also got in contact with access flooring, paint and DFH contractors for budget pricing on Project Eagle. I had to secure signed and returned non-disclosure agreements before I could get the whole bidding process up and running.

3. I completely scoped out my bidding trades for this new data center project and wrote a brand new scope checklist from scratch for each of them. This means I had to look through the plans, drawings and specifications again but in even more detail than I had for Riverwood 200. I was basically drafting the contract that the subcontractor who was awarded the job would sign and follow as they went into installing their trade on the project.


1. Continue to improve upon my work with project eagle and learn everything I can about data centers.

2. I would like to get all of the possible budget numbers that I can so we can have a really full scope to plug into the estimate for Project Eagle.


I played a pretty key role when we were hashing out the proposal for the Riverwood 200 project and I really felt like I helped out a lot and pulled my weight with the team. I know it wasn’t the best work ever considering my lack of experience with the job but I was still very proud.



Section: Technology

Holder Construction Company is an extremely fast growing company that is constantly expanding across the nation. It is a very exciting time here at Holder and along with that expansion comes an expansion in technology as well. At an intern conference we had the BIM/Technology guy present all of the new and exciting technology to us that we were planning on using in the future. One of the pieces of equipment that our BIM department uses is a laser scanning machine, which can topographically map virtually any surface by firing lasers over a wide field and recording all of the information that bounces back. In the field, our people use different apps and tools to help them on the site, one of which being 460 Glue. I’ve never gotten the chance to use this technology but from what I understand it allows for people on site to use their ipads to look around a 3 dimensional building that represents where the future construction will be. It is really cool and pretty amazing stuff. Another piece of technology that Holder really wants to get involved in is the use of drones. We haven’t used any as of yet because of air traffic regulations and such, but it is a technology that we see a ton of potential in going into the future.


e) Week 12 Internship Check-In

Date: August 15th, 2015

Final Task Completion Descriptions:

1. One of the final tasks that I had to complete as my internship came to a close was to transfer all of the documents and that I had created to the person responsible for my trades. I had to make sure everything that I received from subcontractors was dated and uploaded to our company site. I also had to make sure everything was squared away in terms of all of my registrations and such with the company had to be nulled and whatnot.

2. Another task that I had to make sure was complete was to totally fill out my scope checklists that I made before sending them off to the engineer that was going to be relieving me. I needed to go through each document and make sure to make any notes or other callout items needed so there would be no confusion when my documents got put on that other person’s desk.

3. Task number three that I had to do to finish out my internship at Holder was to put together a final speech/final words to be presented at my final meeting with the whole preconstruction department the second to last day of work. It was pretty challenging to say goodbye to all of the friends that I had made in my coworkers but definitely not challenging to find things to speak about considering all of the great learning experiences I had and all of the great memories that I made.

Tasks that were not Completed:

1. All of the trades that I was handling for project eagle and Riverwood 200 were trades that I did not get to see through the end to where we get to purchase the trades, so the new people responsible for those trades now will have to go through the purchasing process.

2. There are new sets of drawings that will be coming out shortly for both of the projects that I listed before. The new engineers (Michele, Justin, Natalie, Jessica and Noelle) will have to do revised takeoffs for these new drawing sets.


I feel as though I learned all that I could about project eagle before I had to pass the reins off to the next person, I was able to learn a ton of new things about fire protection systems and drywall/act that’s for sure. I was also able to get every budget number that we needed from the subcontractors and that I was also very proud of.



Section: Green/Sustainability Focus

Holder Construction Company is actually extremely environmentally conscious when going through the construction process of a new project. Nearly every project that we do during the present day has to be LEED certified. Both project eagle and Riverwood 200 are LEED certified projects and some adjustments had to be made to make sure that they met the LEED requirements. For example, in the lobby area of the Riverwood 200 office building had a certain type of wood paneling in the lobby that was not FSE certified wood, therefore the project could not meet LEED requirements. We offered a substitute wood to the owner of the project that was FSE certified and they decided to go our route to make sure the building would remain LEED certified. Holder has many programs dedicated to LEED certification such as training classes offered online, as well as study guides to brush up on before an associate takes the LEED certification exam. There are too many LEED certified employees who work for Holder to count and we have a woman (EV Bennet) whose job description is to aid and assist in all things LEED related and she does a fantastic job at it. It is safe to say that Holder if very environmentally friendly and cares about the future of the company.


f) Final Self-Reflection

1. Three tasks that I am most proud of completing:a. As mentioned above, I was very proud of myself for completing the scope

checklists for project eagle completely from scratch and gaining a really good understanding of the trades that I am responsible for.

b. I am very proud of how much I learned as a whole, it is unfathomable how much I’ve grown since the beginning of the summer with respect to my overall knowledge about the construction process and what Holder does as a company.

c. Thirdly, I am very proud of all of the hard work and late nights that I put in to play a small role in helping out the team put together the Riverwood 200 proposal and extremely proud of how well the owner reacted to our hard work.

2. Three best learning opportunities taken from this summer:a. I had the opportunity to check out the construction that is underway at the new

Falcons stadium and it was unbelievable to see what was going on and how everything was going up and such. Incredible experience and a really interesting way to learn.

b. I had the opportunity to observe some people that have been working at this job for more than I’ve been alive and gain some of their knowledge and watch how they went about their days in the office to really get an understanding of what preconstruction is all about.

c. I had the opportunity to really represent my company and build relationships with the different subcontractors I was talking to and it really helped me develop more of a professional manner when talking to people and working our way through problems.

3. When I look back at how I turned in the 3 week check-ins I realize that I could’ve been more on time with submitting them, but it was good to keep track of what I did with the notes in my project journal. Looking back through my notes for the previous three weeks really helped me remember what I did for that period of time and what goals I wanted to set for myself moving forward.

4. Future summer goals and professional goals:a. In future internship opportunities I really want to display the knowledge that I

gained this summer as well as continue to build upon that knowledge. I also really hope that I will get the chance to see the construction process from a different viewpoint, from an operations standpoint for example.

b. In the future I really hope to see myself continue to grow in this field and really start to gain mastery in how things are done in the construction world. 20 years down the road I really hope to be high up in the company that I have dedicated my work to and hopefully managing several teams and making executive decisions for critical projects.

c. I’m going to achieve these goals by first achieving the goals I set for myself academically by the end of college. I will also make sure to not only work my tail off when I am hired as a new associate but also just be myself. I do not want to move up in a company by being someone who I am not, being myself I hope to attain promotions and other achievements throughout my career.


5. Stepping back and looking at my internship as a whole this summer I would deem it a huge success. The sole purpose of this internship for me was to get a feel for whether or not I could see myself working in this industry for the rest of my life and from what I have experienced so far that is a huge affirmative. I’m extremely excited for what lies ahead of me down the road and anxious to get going. I really feel that Holder did a phenomenal job with their intern program with giving me REAL responsibilities and making me feel like a valued member of the team. One thing I would change about my experience is maybe the fact that it did take a little bit for me to get plugged into a project, but once I was all pistons were firing. All in all, a very rewarding and incredibly enlightening experience.

6. This Summer has definitely taught me a lot about the real world as well, and what life has in store for me after I leave the shelter of college. I’ve definitely learned that I’m way to young and dumb to be working an 8-5 job everyday and paying bills every month. Living by myself has been an incredibly humbling experience and even though it has been fun to cook my own food and make my own schedule, I’m more than ready to come home.


g) Information Release Form


3) Miscellaneousa) List of References

Aja Gower, LEED APEngineer - Preconstruction(d) [email protected]

Jason StolzOffice Engineer, Preconstruction(d) 770.988.3342 (m) 770.366.7138 [email protected]

Karen A. Matos, LEED APSenior Preconstruction Manager(o) 770.988.3000 (d) [email protected]

Adam KrousePreconstruction Manager (o) [email protected]

Stephanie CrawfordEngineer – Preconstructiond) (770) [email protected]

Jessica R Gore, LEED Green AssociateOffice Engineer - Preconstruction770.988.3222 (d) 941.266.7315 (m)[email protected]

David VargheseOffice Engineer – Preconstruction(770) 988-3329 (d)[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]






tel:770.366.7138

tel:770.988.3342


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Summer Internship Report 2015

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