Internship Report - Essay Example

Internship Report Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation A. Introduction In the course of this year, I had an opportunity to exercise the set of theory lecturers I learned to real life scenarios. I managed to apply and secure an internship with one of the most sought after companies in the area: Guangxi Huala Design and Consulting Group Co. Ltd that is headquartered in Nanning. The internship exercise took a period of close to 12 weeks and, I was positioned as a structural engineer whereby my main scope of duty involved the rigorous adoption of auto CAD software for purposes of designing different structures and factories for that matter. Thus, the focus of this report is on examining the roles I played in the institution; as well as put up a discussion on the numerous orgnisational structures and how they are executed on a day-to-day basis. B. Company Profile Guangxi Huala is a company that was formed a few decades ago and given that is categorised as a small and medium sized business; it adopts a functional structure whereby the entire operations are dividend into few departments that include; HR, marketing and sales; operations as well as finance and accounting departments with each of them performing unique tasks that is focused on accomplishing the overall business goal of profit maximisation and cost reduction while still ensuring to provide quality work at all times. The financial and accounting department is tasked with all the financial structures of the company where budgeting planning and execution is conducted at all times. The human resource management and administrative procedures of the company are focused on evaluating the performance capabilities of the existing employee-base; talent recruitment and retention aspects related to compensation and above all; they are tasked with the responsibility of coming up with operational manuals for engineers who form the basic set of skills of the company. The costing procedures are related job costing where costs are that relate to each work order is treated in a different way given that different orders have different designs and specifications as well as scope. The facilities owned are mostly in terms of software products and technical expertise of the different engineers that possess distinct aspects design and consultancy operations. Employees are expected to punch-in their timing cards as soon as they report in the morning and conduct the same procedure while leaving the premise in the afternoon. Supervision is conducted on real-time basis and each operational section is headed by senior personnel that possess extensive skills in the area of the task at hand. C. Description of Work Performed Considering the fact that my experience and expertise in real life scenarios was somehow restricted; my internship duties was solely focused on the utilisation of Auto CAD software in the course of designing different building structures. As a structural engineer, I must admit that the IT related lessons I managed to grasp during lecturers came in handy to allow exercise my prowess in this area. In fact, within my job cell; I deemed to be the only one that had a stronger understanding of Auto CAD software. In my engagement with the Auto CAD software, I was able to use both 2D and 3D model designs to achieve distinct aspects of flexible designs while also ensuring to formulate powerful styles at all times. It is crucial to note that while 2D is vector focused research design model; 3D helps to come up with structures that define and exhibit real life space (Wu, 2007). In essence, in the course of my work I focused more on CAD Drawing Drafting option, which is one of the most known processess used in all forms of building designs. Using this feature, I was able to easily convert the structural and different design sketches into distinct drawing details and presentation plans. Structural engineers use the feature in the building construction design to come up with the actual design details as well as formulate the accurate details of each of the phase (Wu, 2007). Of particular interest to note, CAD drawing provides a fundamental opportunity to easily translate handcraft and paper drawing to digital printing formats. In one of the work orders, the company was expected to provide a design solution for a particular tunnel, the operational department was supposed to come up with different drawings of a potential designs for the project. For this case, CAD drawings services came in handy since we were all able to convert tunnel sketches into digital printing and later presented to the client as a draft that was later approved. To enhance its efficiency, CAD drawing services is fairly integrated with a CAD plotter that is a feature incorporated within the overall model to allow ease and flexibility of coming with the right shape; dimensions and possible materials that should be used for specific structural objects at hand. It is crucial to note that while working with the firm; I managed to emphasise and encourage that the operational department update the software design models to AutoCAD 2016 and AutoCAD2017 given that they were both unique in their own ways. For instance, in my engagement with AutoCAD 2016 version 20.1, I learned that it possessed a comprehensible canvas; sought to always generate richer design while also; it incorporated new techniques and features like Smart Dimensioning and portrayed an ability to print all information on enhanced PDFs (Culler & Burd, 2007). AutoCAD 2017 version 21.0 was also very useful since it allowed for easier PDF importation; Associative Center Marks and, also resulted to generation of quality graphics under DirectX 11 model design. It is worth to note that while my previous engagement with AutoCAD software was solely confined with the student version; it was my first time to engage with commercial versions that did not include a plot stamp (Culler & Burd, 2007). D. Observation of Equipment & Processess of Particular Interests From the day of my admission and thus, induction, I learned that the business allowed of its workers the most updated personal computers that had stronger and much faster processing units and RAM Memory. I believe that this was meant to ensure that quality of work from each of the engineers was always top notch and had an element of congeniality. There were weekly meetings for all departments while in the case of a work order that was urgent; engineers were specifically requested through a detailed memo of a forthcoming bi-weekly meeting that sought to update the client of the progress of the order at hand. These meetings was also meant to ensure that the overall objective of coming up with the designs was aligned with customer’s expectations and as a result, cut down on unnecessary work-related costs and time aspect. However, I must admit that despite the systems being designed in a way that facilitated reduction of costs and time; there were somehow loss of time especially when updating different software and, also when replacing worn-out computers within the entity. In this regards, it was only efficient to have an internal software personnel working with the department that would be alerted whenever there were hitches in some of the application software in use. I remember there was a time one of the PCs broke down and since more time was to be spend trying to fix it; the supervisor came for mine, which took two days before I could have access to any equipment again. Another flaw I noticed with the company rested with the fact that it took a significant amount of time discussing different potential drawings especially since there was so much bureaucracies that surrounded the way reporting was done. In fact, even with the bi-weekly meetings in place; it was still a challenge to have a design approved given that the senior supervising officer had to literally go through most, if not all, proposals before making a decision that was long overdue. E. Assessment of the Knowledge and Experience Gained In my internship, the level of knowledge and experiences that I managed to gain were indeed priceless and in fact, given that I portrayed growth in my area of expertise; I was offered a job with the company. This is attributed to the fact that I always went a mile ahead to put in my very best at all times thereby prompting my potential employers to even offer the job as a part time duty prior to my graduation upon when I was to be employed on a full time basis. First, through the hands-on experiences I had with different commercial Auto CAD software; helped me to learn valuable skills and thereafter; assisted in even creating opportunities to network and develop professional relationships that would greatly contribute to a successful career life after graduation. Given that I had comprehensive ease with AutoCAD software applications; most of my colleagues would at one point or another sought my advice pertaining to certain complex features that could be applied to enhance model outlook and presentation. In this regard, I created professional relationship with most of them. Certainly, I must emphasise that I garnered lots of experiences relating to teamwork and development of skills. The fact that I was positioned within a job cell; I was expected to liaise with my colleagues on almost a daily-basis thereby sharpening my team work and interpersonal skills that would eventually help to mould me into a more potential candidate for any given employer out there. Through this internship, I managed to acquire awareness on the underlying developments within the building design and consulting sector. My quest for knowledge within the sector ensured that I was always inquisitive that resulted to having access to positive and personal insight into specifics of the job specification. Above all, with the hands-on experience I gathered in the course of the internship; allowed to me achieve even higher grades and a final degree since the additional skills and set of knowledge that I had gained in the course of internship was easily applicable in my practical studies. As a result of this, I was positioned in a much fair position to progress into the next phase of my career growth and development in structural engineering as a whole. References List Culler, D.E. & Burd, W., 2007. A framework for extending computer aided process planning to include business activities and computer aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) data retrieval. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, vol.23, no.3, pp.339-350. Wu, G.F., Hu, H.J., Gong, X.B., Zhang, W.P., Wang, K.B. and Dong, T.X., 2007. Application and development of casting process parameterized graph library based on AutoCAD software. Zhuzao Jishu (Foundry Technology), vol.28, no.4, pp.535-537 Read More