Introduction

Hello everyone! My name is Tanner Johnson and I am currently a senior Civil Engineering student at Minnesota State, Mankato- in Minnesota. I’ve been working at Bolton & Menk the past two summers (2020 & 2021) as a Construction Inspector. The summer prior I worked at American Engineering Testing as a Civil Engineering Technician for an internship. These jobs were both awesome! I learned a lot about Civil Engineering and the construction processes as a whole. From pounding proctors in the lab, all the way to testing concrete or paving days in the scorching heat, I can truly say I love the field that I’m getting into.

Personally, I’m an avid outdoorsmen. Hunting, fishing, boating, you name it. I love to be outdoors. Anything sports, I’m also a big fan of. I’ve played football my entire life and garnished some amazing memories along the way. My high school football team won state for football back in 2015. I’ve competed at state for wrestling and track also during my high school campaign. As a collegiate athlete, I got to enjoy two years on the Minnesota State Mavericks football team. Due to hard college courses and injuries, I decided to hang the cleats up for good and call it a career. More recently, I have been spending more time in the books and gearing myself for my impending professional career as a Civil Engineer.

Construction Inspection 101

In progress…

General overview of inspectors. I mainly did inspections of water, SAN, & Storm systems that were being placed on a full road reconstruct. This is what my coronavirus summer of 2020 looked like.

The Life of a Civil Engineering Technician

We eat, sleep, and bleed quality assurance for our customers. The tests that we run vary significantly. Ranging from concrete testing in the field all the way to permeability tests in the lab. These tests are all done with utmost precision to guarantee to our clients that the job will get done right. We run our tests to the best of our ability to prevent as much as we can from going wrong. After all of the geotechnical work is done on the building. Geotechnical work on a building starts with borings in the soil to find how much of the soil needs to be cut. Then we will need to fill the cut area with material, normally doing density tests every lift, ranging from 1-3 feet. After we established that our soil meets the specifications from the blueprints we are following, we will then (normally) use concrete for the base. This is when we will test the concrete for the air and slump to make sure that it meets the specifications. All the geotechnical work that we do, is in my opinion, the most important part of the construction of the project. If the geotechnical work isn’t done right, or the contractors are trying to run cheap and take shortcuts, this could result in a building collapsing in the future.

What my days consisted of in the summer of 2019 – a Civil Engineering Technician
What I’m aspiring to be- a Civil Engineer

What People Say About Civil Engineering

“Scientists investigate that which already is; Engineers create that which has never been.”

Albert Einstein

“Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it.”

Sir Henry Royce

“The fewer moving parts, the better. Exactly. No truer words were ever spoken in the context of engineering.”

Christian Cantrell

If you would like to learn more about Civil Engineering Technician work, continue to explore my site.

Let’s build something great together.

Get in touch!