Third Time’s the Charm

I’ve always wondered if the saying “Third time’s the charm” were true. Does it always take three tries before you hit your stride? Does something happen on your third go-around that’s different than the two before it? I’m not sure if that idiom applies to every aspect of life, but this summer was my third internship at RAND, and it was also my best.

During my first summer at RAND in 2012, I worked on the Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing (MEP) team. I returned to the University of Virginia that August with a taste for project management and a yearning to learn more about it. My sophomore year I declared myself a Civil Engineering major with a double minor in Business and Architecture. When I returned to RAND last summer, I worked with the Facade & Roofing team. Even though it was my second internship at RAND, joining a new team was like working at a new company—I didn’t understand anything at first, and it felt like I was starting over. Both summers, my learning curves were dauntingly steep.

This summer, however, I knew I would be returning to the Facade & Roofing team, and I was very excited. Based on my internship last year, I already had a basic understanding of what kind of work the team did. After getting back into the swing of things the first week, I could feel the learning curve flattening out. Writing up site visit reports became less of a struggle, and speaking in technical jargon started to feel strangely familiar. As I became more confident in my knowledge of the field, I grew eager to learn more.

A few weeks into my internship, I was assigned to work on a major exterior restoration project at Franklin Plaza, a 14-building cooperative in East Harlem. Luke Pantaleo was RAND’s Project Manager for this $28 million job, and I accompanied him on site visits twice a week. My main role in the beginning was to observe and take notes while Luke conducted the visit. At first even this was tricky because I was unfamiliar with much of the terminology. When writing the (often lengthy) site visit reports, Luke helped me phrase my sentences so that they were technically accurate. As I became more familiar with the project, site visits became more interesting and writing the reports became second nature.

Unlike my two previous summer internships, where I jumped from project to project at RAND, my assignment at Franklin Plaza this summer was continuous. I returned to the site every week, which enabled me to gain a much better understanding of the construction work and the life cycle of a project. I also had the opportunity to attend several board meetings, which opened my eyes to the variety of parties involved in a project.

Through working on such a large and complex job, I learned how to efficiently organize and keep track of the many aspects of a project. Through a process called task logging, I set deadlines for tasks and followed through with people to make sure each item was completed on schedule. I learned how valuable organization skills can be when dealing with a project as massive as this one.

As my internship started to wind down, Luke began to push me out of my comfort zone and into the shoes of a real project manager. This meant I had to lead my own site visits. I was hesitant at first, but Luke reminded me that I had been learning all summer and taking on more and more responsibility, and he assured me that I was ready to take the next step.

At first I felt like an imposter: A 21-year-old college girl in a hard hat and steel-toe boots, evaluating the work of experienced men? When I arrived on site with my notepad and camera, the workers looked at me skeptically, as if to say “What’s she doing here?” They quickly understood what I was doing there when I reminded them to wet the bricks before laying them because otherwise the bricks would absorb water from the mortar mix and the joints would not cure properly.

I soon found that it didn’t matter that I was younger or that I was a woman. As long as I could demonstrate my knowledge confidently and professionally, people would value and respect my input.

The highlight of my internship was riding a suspended scaffold. Luke had been performing facade observations from these swinging platforms 20 stories high while I was conducting my own site visits safely on the ground. After taking a 16-hour safety course and passing the exam, I became certified to ride a rig in New York City. During my last week at RAND, I strapped on my harness, hooked into my lifeline, and stepped onto the skinny metal platform for the ride of my life.

I’d be lying to say I wasn’t nervous. I kept going over how to tie my emergency knots in case the scaffold collapsed. But once we started ascending, excitement trumped fear as we climbed story by story to the top. I looked down at Luke, who appeared smaller and smaller, and watched as the city spread out around me as far as the eye can see. Even though it was only a 20-story building, I felt like I was atop the city’s highest skyscraper.

It was quiet up there, almost peaceful, and I began to evaluate the facade in front of me. I called out brick replacement, mortar joints that needed pointing, and defective windowsill setting beds. Being up on that scaffold, some 200 feet above the ground quantifying exterior repairs, I felt that after my three internships at RAND I had really reached my peak, literally and figuratively. I couldn’t imagine a better way to cap off my summer.