Hello! I’m Nicole Demby, and I’m a commissioning engineering intern and proud B.L.U.E. Program participant at McKinstry this summer. I’m from Cortez, Colo. and I’m a rising junior studying Mechanical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines—just five miles from McKinstry’s office in Golden, Colo.

Getting to intern at McKinstry this summer has been invaluable. My knowledge of HVAC systems and commissioning engineering (not to mention construction in general) has grown exponentially over the past few weeks.

I can honestly say the construction industry as a whole is much clearer to me now, which will help me evaluate different career paths after I graduate. Now that I have hand-on experience with HVAC systems, difficult classes like thermodynamics (which I’m taking this fall) don’t seem nearly as intimidating.

Engineering aside, the professional skills I’ve developed will also help me down the road. For example, I’m much more confident working in Excel and I can tell that my technical writing has really developed.

My favorite part of this summer, however, has been getting to work with and learn from the awesome McKinstry team here in Colorado. The Golden office is like one big family, and I’m happy to be a part of it. I’m excited to come to work every day because I get to learn from professionals who I respect and enjoy hanging out with.

Just last week, our Golden team organized an outdoor conservation project where we partnered with Denver Mountain Parks to do fire mitigation in a nearby area. For half the day, 16 of us thinned a forest area of pine trees and fed them to a wood chipper, spreading the fresh mulch on eroded areas of forest floor.

This “thinning” helped prevent the likelihood and spread of forest fires, as fire danger is currently very high in Colorado. This project allowed me to connect with some teammates who I don’t normally get to see. Most importantly, though, it was a total blast!

I’ve heard a lot about McKinstry’s vision statement of “together, building a thriving planet,” but this project was a powerful real-life demonstration of just how committed McKinstry is to the environment and our local community.

I’m proud to be on both the Colorado team and the B.L.U.E. Program team this summer!