I have finally gotten some of those jobs under construction.
I just got some new ones too in the last couple of months:
1. I have a remodel of the Football locker room underway. I got to meet the coach and shake his hand. I am working with the assistant AD. If I do a good job for them I think maybe I might be able to get some good tickets later.
2. I just picked up a job to renovate some engine test cells and provide infrastructure for new dynamometers for the aviation school. That is interesting.
3. I am going to provide a new building to store coal. It is interesting because I got to do research on domes, barrel vaults and steel frame fabric structures.
4. I am replacing a very large 40,000 cfm hvac unit on an animal research building. I was pretty inimidated at first but have found a lot of familiar functioning parts on it from my decades of automotive tinkering. It has a 4" d. mixing valve which works just like the bypass thermostat on the typical mb engine. Oh and it has a couple of radiators (cooling coils) which are essentially large aluminum and copper radiators.
I can hang with the engineers on the concepts but lack their at the fingertip knowledge and ability to make calculations.
I am learning the ins and outs of doing things here and am able to use my experience negotiating with our JOC contractors to get job orders priced and tasked appropriately.
It is gettting to be a lot of fun!
The variety is astounding. If I had had to guess what doing this job was like before doing it I would have guessed a lot of big buildings mostly alike. The diversity of activities including research is simply staggering.