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Melissa Steeves
Project Engineer

Meet Melissa Steeves; she worked as a project engineer for the Hunt Construction Group on the San Francisco Federal Building. She was born in New Brunswick, which is on the east coast of Canada. According to Melissa the salary range for project engineers can vary from $45,000 and up depending on what your background is. She’s been working for the Hunt Construction Group for 5 years but she has been working in the field for 8 years. Her degree is in civil engineering. She now lives in New York City, with her two kittens Tika and Loki.

What a project engineer does

Melissa’s job is to make sure her project gets completed on time and on budget (which is basically quality control); she makes sure that the building is being built based on the architects’ design and the structural engineers’ plans. She is a professional engineer who performs engineering design during the development of the building.

Why did she choose this field?

Melissa was always good at math and art so after high school she decided to study architecture. In New Brunswick students need to take two years of civil engineering before going into the Architecture program so during those two years Melissa decided she liked it better so she decided to change majors and graduated with her civil engineering degree in five years.

An average day in the life of Melissa Steeves...

The first thing Melissa does when she gets to work is check her e-mails, which mostly would be QFI’s, (Quest for Information) these are e-mails from people working on the building wondering about something that they don’t understand. It’s her job to find answers to these questions by communicating with other engineers. On most days she takes a site walk to check up on what’s going onsite.

The best part of being a project engineer. . .

“…Is being out there, in the fresh air… and getting off on the 19th floor and seeing the sites, the bay, and the city hall,” she says. Melissa also said that she likes the fact that she can learn from the people she works with. She recently found out that her superintendent has been doing that job since she was born. Basically, there’s a lot to learn from him and from the other experienced people around her.
The only bad thing about Melissa’s job is the paperwork she has to deal with. It can be a little overwhelming and stressful if you let it take you over

Pass projects

Melissa worked on the San Francisco Federal Building which is called a “green” building, meaning it is safe for the environment and is done in a resource efficient way. It has a natural cooling system making it quite the attraction. She said that the employees that work there will be sitting facing the sun, in a window wall building, so when they get hot they’ll open the shaft of the window and let the fresh San Francisco bay air cool the floor them.

Life Outside Of Work

Melissa says she likes to ride her bike, cook for people, write in her journal, rock climb, knit, read, and “soak up as much as I can of this fabulous city.”

Links

SF federal building

Hunt Construction Group