Blog: Hitting the Road for a Summer Internship in Transportation Engineering
Meet Audrey Quilala
I am a second-year civil engineering major, a student-athlete on the Women's Water Polo team and a member of Chi Epsilon, a national honor society for civil engineers.
Transportation engineering is one of the five main scopes of civil engineering I was introduced to in “Civil & Environmental Infrastructure & Society,” an introductory course exploring civil infrastructure’s relationship with society and the natural environment. Listening to industry speakers and participating in hands-on labs, the transportation and structural tracks immediately piqued my interest. I wanted to explore what a future in either path would look like, and I knew that meant getting an internship.
The summer internship at the Sacramento County Department of Transportation, or SACDOT, checked all of my boxes. It offers a unique opportunity to work in both the planning and design departments. In addition, there is an emphasis on bringing interns out into the field as much as possible.
Developing Confidence as an Engineer
The week after Summer Session I finals ended in July, I jumped straight into working in the planning department located in the Rosemont community of Sacramento. One of my first tasks was to make trip generation tables and letters, which basically tell land developers what traffic studies they need to run based on the estimated number of vehicle trips produced by their proposed development.
The developments ranged from 500,000-square-foot distribution centers in Metro Air Park to hobby farms on the outskirts of Sacramento County. I also spent time working on cross sections of the written county improvement plans for required street type, bicycle class and sidewalk width of different heavily impacted streets.
At the beginning, I was the newest intern in the office and felt like the least knowledgeable person in the room. There seemed to be endless engineering abbreviations and jargon that I didn’t understand.
Pushing myself to remember that everyone in the room was once in my position and knowing when to ask questions to my superiors or fellow interns saved me. Fortunately, my team gave more advice than I could have possibly asked for. Since most were previously in the private sector, they had a wide variety of insights from their own journeys in the civil engineering community.
An Educational Summer by Design
I spent the second half of my internship with the design department, which helped me further develop my design software skills and expand my network.
Within the department, there was a landscape architect who was a UC Davis alum whom I immediately connected with. She helped me jump into AutoCAD and assigned me custom landscape details for a project plan set. I was even able to go with her to visit the project site and see the real-world implications of my work. I continue to talk with her outside of the internship and am grateful for the friendship we’ve formed.
I was also able to go on three active site visits led by the Sacramento County Construction Management and Inspection Department. Each site visit was at a different phase of construction, allowing me to observe a wide variety of field operations, such as staking, trenching and vacuum testing manholes.
These site visits brought together multiple county agencies, like water, sewer and environmental review. Speaking with engineers from these different agencies was an enlightening experience, showing me how interconnected all of their jobs are. In order to develop the county, all these engineers are working together with their own standards to make sure the safety of the community is maintained.
Paving My Path Forward
As a rising sophomore with limited experience, I knew SACDOT was a place where I could see a variety of transportation engineering while finding quality mentors. Working a paid 40-hour workweek for three months, I was able to fully immerse myself in transportation engineering and learn from experts in the field.
With how interconnected all the civil engineering fields are, creating connections with every person you meet is invaluable, from peers to those above you. My time at allowed me to grow my professional network as well as my technical engineering skills. While I am continuing to explore what other opportunities civil engineering has to offer, I will not forget how influential an internship I had this summer and will continue to stay in contact with my coworkers.
