Editor’s Note: B.L.U.E.—or Build, Learn, Understand and Enrich—represents the core tenets of McKinstry’s internship program: the B.L.U.E. Program. As a part of the program, we have asked our interns to share their backgrounds, their passions, their work, their lessons learned and their ideas for the future on the “B.L.U.E. Blog.” We launched the B.L.U.E. Blog on Spark in 2017, so Logan’s post about his second year of interning at McKinstry kicks off the second year of the blog’s existence.

In my second summer of being an intern at the McKinstry office in Golden, Colo., I have joined the construction team to further expand my knowledge and skillset. I have a “never say no” attitude about work, which has lead me to taking on many kinds of projects here at McKinstry. I have found myself outside of my comfort zone, which has pushed me to expand my skills.

For example, I have been challenged to develop my AutoCAD skills working on a project for the L.A. County School District. I have been using AutoCAD software to update project “as-builts” for three different schools. While I learned this program in school, the type of tasks I have had to complete with the software have been different than what I learned in the classroom, which helps expand my skillset.

I am also spending a significant amount of my time working on a McKinstry project at my own college: the Colorado School of Mines. The Mines project has helped me improve my communication skills since I have had to work with subcontractors and help them do their best work. Working at Mines has also been fun because I have been finding parts of my college that I never knew existed. From the underground steam tunnels, to an underground sealed-off pool, to finding Melville Coolbaugh’s memoirs (an old Mines president with a few buildings named after him) my campus seems to have a lot of secrets.

Outside of the day-to-day work, McKinstry has taught me a lot about the working world. I can attribute this largely to my awesome boss, Tara Carney, but also to everyone who I have met here that has been so friendly. My curiosity has not been limited hereit is a common occurrence for people to stay 15 minutes after a meeting to explain concepts that I did not understand and dig deeper into problems which I am curious about.

This has been an environment that has fostered my learning and creativity, which excites me about a potential future here. I am happy and grateful that McKinstry has given me this valuable opportunity to learn and develop while simultaneously enabling me to contribute to ongoing projects.