Fatmir Kuci
Current Position: Graduate Engineer
Hire Date: May 4, 2022
Hired as an intern? Yes
Other titles held: Intern
The intern rotation program was an awesome idea for students to get both field and office experience before getting started in the industry. That reflects really good on AEW, showing the company is interested in guiding young engineers towards understanding the type of work they’d like to do when starting their career.
When started as a full time engineer (after my 2nd internship), I was pretty excited to get right to work using all of the knowledge I had acquired from my classes. Having some previous work experience at AEW felt a bit as a head start as well.
There were some challenging tasks the first few months, especially understanding that along a project development, there’s always many more people involved in the process than you think, and the work between departments needs to be coordinated for a project to be successful.
Working towards becoming a Professional Engineer was and still remains as a career goal. After passing the FE, now I’m looking forward to studying and scheduling the PE exam soon.
For all college students, the advice that works best I think, is to just ask questions. For any uncertainty on doing a task, or just simply curious, don’t hesitate to ask someone that may know the answer. No one really ever knows everything.
For Civil students in particular, schedule the FE exam before finishing school, while everything you’ve learned is more recent and easier to come back to. It is an important element at the beginning of your career that reflects very well on your resume, showing progress towards the Professional Licensure.
I think the biggest accomplishments so far, considering only about 1.5 years of experience as a graduate engineer, are a bit limited, but nonetheless, passing the FE exam has been a great achievement I think.
In addition to the many different projects I’ve been a part of so far, and all the things I’ve learned from other Engineers, I think working on some specific projects, from beginning of design to end of construction has also been a big achievement, thinking what was realized starting with only some ideas. With more time and experience, I’m sure bigger and greater achievements will be added on to the list.