Hello! My name is Max King and I’m a B.L.U.E. Program intern at McKinstry’s Portland office. I work on the mechanical majors team, and I’m also studying Construction Management at Washington State University.

When I was pursuing an internship, I knew that one of my family members had previously worked for McKinstry. I thought interning here would be a good way to get my foot in the door with a company that already knows my family’s work ethic.

For my degree program at WSU, there are a few companies that come in nearly every week of the semester to present to students about their company, projects, goals and culture. I made sure to attend the McKinstry presentation and interview with them.

Ultimately, I chose McKinstry because of their commitment to creating a truly sustainable built environment. I wanted to gain experience in the mechanical field and I’d heard good things from my family about McKinstry.

I’ve been working in Portland for several months now. Most of my internship has been all about mastering mechanical systems and discovering what project managers do every day.

I work closely with CJ Best, a project manager in the Portland office. CJ is involved with just about every McKinstry mechanical majors project in Portland!

Thanks to his wide scope, I’ve been working on four different projects: a data center project, Lot 5, 11th & Hoyt, and the Broadway Tower. For the data center project, I helped prepare for the closeout.

Lot 5 is an eight-story office building. My responsibility there was to update and supersede previous drawings from Bluebeam Studio.

11^th & Hoyt is a 15-story apartment complex. On this one, I primarily worked on earned value spreadsheet calculations and situated some contractors’ RFIs (Requests For Information).

Lastly, Broadway Tower is a 20-story mixed-purpose high-rise located in downtown Portland. I’ve been predominantly occupied with this project: Creating BOMs (Bill of Materials) for the general foremen, fine-tuning the mechanical systems, refining our earned value spreadsheet and compiling trade sleeves for the project team.

After working with McKinstry for three months, I think what I like most about working for a mechanical contractor is the amount of work you can do and still be doing something different. There is a ton of variety in this line of work, and it never gets stale. Every job has its own unique qualities. Three months isn’t a large sum of time, but I can see myself not getting bored of this profession for years to come.