At 5:00AM, my dad gets up to go to work in North Vancouver every day, right beside the brewery! What a lucky guy. Once he says goodbye to his beautiful and precious daughter he zooms away in either his sports car, or in his SUV. Once he arrives at work, he says hello to no one, because he gets there first.
The very first thing he does is open up his computer, and make a double espresso and reviews all the emails he’s gotten overnight, because someone is emailing at 1AM, and 2AM, and 3AM…
After he does that, he goes to check out a building at 7-9AM to do a BG review. He basically just reviews buildings to find problems and solutions to those problems so their buildings don’t explode. Depending on what he’s doing, he’ll check the structure of the building for signs of building distress, or inspecting for any water damage or concrete damage. After checking everything out, my dad writes a report and sends it in to the building problems.
On a more fun note, my dad once looked at a building where the elevator stopped working. And instead of going down, like how they usually fall in movies, it fell up. And smooshed like an accordion.
Another time, a building in Toronto exploded, and my dad had to help EMS workers go into the building and show them where it was safe so they could collect the bodies. Unfortunately, it was a gas explosion.
Another time, my dad had to investigate why a building’s roof collapsed. Luckily, no one was actually hurt in that one. But there was a woman who was sitting on the roof at the time, and she got buried in dirt. Luckily she was okay!
Now; moral of the story, engineering, though it doesn’t sound super exciting.. actually is a very thrilling and exciting job to have at times! It is tough, but it is rewarding. I have done work at my dads job before, and in my personal experience it wasn’t too amazing because I was just cleaning windows, so it really depends on what you do.
My dad, Brennan Vollering, founded Sense engineering in 2014 with his work buddy, Ted Denniston. They have been running this engineering company since then, setting up locations in multiple other provinces and cities. But what does the average structural engineer do in his day? This Bring Your Kid to Work Day presentation will show you everything that he does in just a single project.
To show you what he does at his work, I’ve put up a slideshow! Here it is: