Same Job - New Work

A change in my work schedule has occurred. I am now working in New Orleans just about every day. I am still working for Shaw, but I only get to go to my Baton Rouge office every now and then.

I am working in the 9th Ward at the Jackson Barracks. Shaw got the contract to manage the project. So we are not doing any of the design or construction. Here is what I am responsible for. I am a “Project Manager” and I oversee a couple of different projects. I am mainly working with other people, but there is one project that is all me. Basically when the architects and engineers turn in their work, I look over everything and make sure that they have included everything in the scope of work and nothing more. The way that these projects are funded is through FEMA money. There is what they call a project worksheet for each building. If the scope of work is not on the PW then we don’t have the money for that work. In order to protect the client Louisiana Military Department, LAMD, we make sure that the contractors are not building anything that they are not supposed to be building. Right now we are mainly in the design stage. We are writing up a lot of scopes of work for different areas. Once we we’re done with the design stage then we will move on to be a site manager. Again, making sure that they are doing things right. As an engineer I am not allowed to say something doesn’t look like its designed right. If I think that something is wrong, then I just tell our client about it. Then they decide on what to do. It seems like something that I will learn a lot from!

Here are a couple of pictures from one of projects that I am working on.

This shows how high the water was in this house, ~6 ft.


There are about 15 houses like this in the "Historic Garrison". For those of you who didn't know this, a garrison is a group of housing for troops. Usually meaning a place were they are staying to guard the area. I just learned that myself.


Here is me with the short door way. I don't know why it was so much shorter than all of the other doors. That was the only one like that in the house.


This is an old bee hive. They are the "Africanized Killer Bees". They had someone come out to take them away. They are already rebuilding the nest though. This shows the nest after they took a huge chunk out of it.


Graffiti from the early 1900's.


I will try and keep you updated with the cool stuff going on over here.