ALLSTARS 2017

INTERNSHIPS
ENGINEERING
INTERN
Trent Brandenburg
Hall & Hall Engineers Inc.
Hiawatha, Iowa
Trent
What does your company do?
They are a civil engineering firm. They specialize in
four main areas, which include municipal engineering,
landscape architecture, land development and land
surveying. So that includes designing things like trails,
roadways, sewer systems and parks. Other things that
we do include traffic engineering, drainage, site development
plans and erosion control.
What are your job duties?
Currently, I’m an intern. I’m at Kirkwood Community
College right now, my sophomore year. Some things
I do around the office are CAD (Computer-Aided
Design) work. Currently I’m mapping several subdivisions
in the city of Urbana onto CAD. I prepare and
deliver plan sets and submittals. During the summers,
I’m mainly out with the survey team doing things like
pavement staking, finding property boundaries, and
creating topographic maps. Some other things I’ve
done include traffic studies, inspections, career fairs,
and posting signs for rezoning.
What is most interesting about your job?
My two favorite parts of this job are working with
CAD – getting to know the program, all the ins and
outs and everything – and going with the survey crew.
My favorite part’s probably the survey crew because I
actually get to go out into the field. It’s a lot of manual
labor, but it’s very rewarding because at the end of the
day you know you’ve done something to help out your
community, which will be there for a very long time.
How did you decide on this career path?
Growing up I was always interested in building things
out of K’nex and Legos. I always liked building dams
out of mud,
sticks and
rocks. So,
I kind of
knew I was
interested
in designing and building things.
ONLINE: Watch Trent discuss his
internship at Hall & Hall Engineers Inc.
Go to http://bit.ly/CCAllStars
What do most people not realize you do in
your job?
One thing most people don’t realize I do is probably
going out in the field and doing lots of manual labor,
such as pavement staking. Most of the time during
the summers I’ll be out with the survey crew unless it’s
really slow or it’s cold and rainy. •
30 ALL STARS of the Creative Corridor