Getting My Chance

As an engineer, I've always wanted to solve some form of a natural disaster. Ambitious, sure, but don't worry, I realize that I cannot stop all earthquakes, fires, and floods. Instead I have decided to do what I can, design buildings for what us engineers call, "life safety", and do the math to find out why some buildings don't live up to our expectations.

In college, I cold-emailed the dean of the engineering school, who was a civil engineer from New Zealand. I read about his research online- he was working on a project to prevent the next Hurricane Katrina -- cool right? Kindly, the dean emailed me back to tell me that he was not actively researching, but that Judy Mitrani-Reiser could use some help in her lab. And, so I starting working towards my goal. With Judy and her team, I began researching hurricanes, building trends, and damage trends in the state of Florida to help insurance companies access risk more accurately. It was pretty cool.

About a year in to working in Judy's lab, I decided to go abroad to Sydney, Australia, and I fell in love. With a city, with a country, with my friends and my experiences. And to be honest, I left my heart there. Specifically, I left my heart in my concrete class. My concrete class pushed me to my limits on study abroad and taught me a lot about myself.

But let's start at the beginning. On my first day in my concrete class in Sydney, I walked in to a room of 200 civil engineering students (Hopkins classes had 12 students). I was the only student not from Australia. The professor then walked in and told us that 33% of us would fail. I looked around, wondering what I got myself in to, and a nice Australian boy introduced himself to me. This was Dan. 1/3 of "the civils" who made my study abroad experience what it was. The civils introduced me to 24 hour study parties, involving watching an MTV countdown of the most Australian songs ever, a tour of the grocery store so I could see how many kinds of chips they sold in Australia, a trip to swim at an empty beach on a Friday after our 9 am class, and, of course, a lot of studying, because, lets face it, that class was hard.

But another amazing thing happened that morning. There was an earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. Before this, Christchurch was considered a pretty safe place in terms of earthquakes. The fault lines that ran through New Zealand and created all the mountains that we all come to New Zealand to see, avoided Christchurch. They went up the west side of the South Island, but not all the way over here. Right after the professor told us that 33% of us would fail the class, he also told us that as Australian engineers, this morning would change our lives. That the concrete codes would change, the building philosophy would change, and our lives as engineers in this region would be changed. He told us to face reality, that few of us would be engineers in Sydney for our whole lives. That many of us would engineer structures in Hong Kong, the United States, the UAE, and even New Zealand. This really did change everything.

As study abroad ended, I told myself, and the civils, that I would be back. I planned to come home, graduate, and go back to find a job in Sydney. That fall, I took a senior design class at Hopkins, that was taught by an adjust professor from Simpson Gumpertz and Heger. I loved the class and the work that the professors did, so during my winter break, I went to visit their office in DC and shadow my professor for a day. I spent some time at the end of the day talking to people around the office. I had applied to Lehigh at this point, so my professor introduced me to a Lehigh alum, Bob. Bob told me all about this new project that he was trying to work through. A building had differentially settled in Christchurch, NZ after the 2011 earthquakes. There wasn't much precedence at the time for re-leveling a building that had sunk more in one corner than the rest of the building. Bob was working through many repair schemes, that he shared with me. And that was it. I decided that day that SGH was the company for me. I could do work on differentially settled buildings in New Zealand and create new ways to save a city. Done deal. But not so fast...

I got an interview with the Performance department at Thornton Tomasetti. Shortly after the interview, they gave me an offer. Many people in my masters program knew my feelings about Australia, and another student, told me that TT often sends new people to New Zealand to do earthquake repair work -- um hello, dream come true. It could happen to me because it happened to another Lehigh MEng grad who went to work in the New York office of Thornton Tomasetti (Hey Kiki). I told my mom, and she asked when she could book her ticket. Not quite yet.

When I got to TT, I got involved in the Property Loss Consulting group. The PLC group, in a nutshell, works on insurance claims for adjusters, as structural experts. We verify claims and repair schemes, very similar to the work I was doing in my lab at Hopkins. I started talking to the head of the practice in New York, and not long after that, the idea of coming to the TT Christchurch office came up. We just had to see what the demand was in New Zealand, and unfortunately the timing just wasn't right. I was super bummed, but told myself my chance would come.

It took a little over a year of ups and downs, the idea of New Zealand on the table a few times, but never made a reality. Then one night, at 4:30 am I got an email from Kiki (The Lehigh graduate who had been sent from the NY office to New Zealand) She said she had mentioned my name a few times at happy hour, and asked if I would still consider coming to New Zealand. I replied "I could potentially be interested... when?" Less than a week later, the head of the PLC practice popped the question(s), "Do you want to go to New Zealand? And can you leave tomorrow?" Well tomorrow was a little soon, but 6 days later I was on a plane, still in shock, on my way to Christchurch, New Zealand.

Many people were so surprised that I was able to go in just six days, but most of them didn't know that I've been wanting this opportunity since that very first morning in my concrete class. I'm so excited to be here, and in my first week, I've gotten the chance to relevel three different buildings. I'm only here for two months, but I fully intend to make the best of it, and see all that New Zealand has to offer. I'll write here about my experiences, and post photos of my adventures!

Thanks for reading :)