My Experience as a Summer Intern: Applying Training to Meet Challenges

This summer, one of the buildings I worked on was the was a secure facility in Maryland. The facility is a two-story, underground building that has been used as a standby command center, Secret Service Training Center, and National Archives storage. Currently, the building is being renovated to house different research groups.

For this project, I was able to survey the facility to look at existing conditions and possible layouts for the new mechanical system. After the walk through, I created the demo plans and started the load calculations for the spaces. Once I had the loads, I designed the layout of the ducts and fan boxes around the existing conditions.

From this project, I gained experience with programs like Trace, AutoCAD, and Revit as well as using an air duct calculator, also known as a ductulator. I worked around challenges caused by the existing conditions and a secure boundary. I enjoyed being able to follow the project through the design process and apply so many of the concepts I had learned in trainings.