 Welcome to this episode of the Structural Engineering Channel podcast. A podcast focused on helping structural engineering professionals stay up to date on technical trends in the field and to help them succeed in their careers and lives. I'm your co-host Alexis Clark. I work in Hilti's North American headquarters as the product manager of our chemical anchoring portfolio in the U.S. and Canada. I'm a licensed professional engineer in Texas. I received my bachelor's in civil engineering from UT Austin and I'm currently an MBA candidate at Auburn. I'm your co-host Matt Ricardo and I'm a licensed engineer at DCI Engineers practicing on structural projects in California and I got my undergraduate degree from Cal Poly Pomona and a master's in structural engineering from UC San Diego. In this episode we talk to Drew Dudley, P.E.S.E., Vice President at Dudley Denham Engineering and a lecturer at Texas A&M University about the state of structural engineering and higher education. He is a passionate entrepreneur, professor and structural engineer with a hunger for learning, a calling for teaching and mentorship and motivation to make the world a better place. Drew is a licensed professional engineer in Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, New York, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Georgia, Maryland and Florida and is also certified as a Model Law Structural Engineer or MLSE by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Survey or NCEES. In 2020 he won the National Society of Professional Engineering, N.S.P.E., Young Engineer of the Year Award for the State of Texas and the Brosses Chapter and is part of the Engineering News Record, E.N.R., Top Young Professionals of 2019. Now let's jump into our conversation with Drew. Drew, welcome to the Structural Engineering Channel podcast. Hey guys, glad to be here. Glad to have you with us. We just told our audience a little bit about your background but if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit more detail about your career journey and then ultimately what it is that you do today on a day-to-day basis at Dudley Dunham Engineering. All right, sounds great. So I'll start out. I got my undergraduate at the University of Kansas and I'm going to talk about co-ops and internships but unfortunately I was a student athlete, played football at Kansas so I didn't have an opportunity during the summers to do a summer internship except after I graduated I did do one at Turner Construction where I got to work on Children's Mercy Park. We're sporting Kansas City plays in Kansas City but then I at that point I knew I was going to go ahead and get my master's. I had been accepted in at Texas A&M so that's where I went to go get my master's in civil engineering with a structural emphasis and while getting my master's I was able to get a co-op position with Schultz Engineering which is a civil engineering firm and that's not because I didn't try to get it with structural. I just wasn't able to you know make it work at that time but I think I learned a lot working for Joe Schultz at the civil engineering firm. One you know like even today that's useful information because their drawing sets look completely different from a structural engineering drawing set. There's lots of different conventions. When they draw sections they have different vertical scales or just horizontal scales so just being able to understand that is useful. I did do a summer internship during my master's with Burns McDonnell where I was in their transmission and distribution group and that was we were doing substation design and also transmission line doing foundations for those but I had my eyes set on working at Walter P. Moore. They were heavily involved in the department at the time. I still are and they had done Cowboy Stadium where Reliance Stadium where the Texans play and they also were involved in our capstone corps so I knew a couple of their people so I was lucky enough to land a position there and the first job that I got my feet wet on was the renovations to Kyle Field which is a $500 million renovation in addition to the football stadium there and that was it was fast track steel construction. Probably never will be on another project like that in my life literally. I was reviewing the shop drawings while designing you know the very next section which is going to be attaching into that's how fast track it was and there was a lot of design that was done in the submittals which is what you're not supposed to do but that's how it happened just how fast you know that project went. Also I got to work on the KDISD football stadium which is a cast and plays concrete stadium in KD, Texas got to work on a very cool natatorium project so indoor swimming pool for sci-fair ISD and it's kind of relevant to what we're doing now because we're doing a pretty large mass timber project but on that one that had eight foot deep glulam beams that were spanning over the natatorium with tongue and groove decking so that was really my first heavy timber experience and then I also got to do some K through 12 middle schools high school stuff like that so I was at Walterby Moore for about four years and then I went and worked for a smaller firm and at that firm is where I learned how to do conventional wood framing construction because you know Walterby Moore we didn't really we did masonry but we didn't touch cold form steel or wood so got to do that. Also that's where I learned multi-family construction doing garden style podium wrap style apartment living and then in 2017 is when I started Dudley engineering on a hope and a prayer didn't have a client really started out with home builders doing foundation design for custom homes and again I got to give a shout out to Joe Schultz because as a he has established civil engineering firm in the market he was referring me you know telling guys you know there's another structural engineer now and so he got us on some bigger projects and you know just slowly built our way up from there and and the beginning of this year we acquired the structural division of Dunham engineering and so that's why it went from Dudley engineering to Dudley Dunham engineering and with that we've brought in fire stations a lot more K through 12 design auto dealerships on top of the commercial and multi-family stuff that we were already doing and as I mentioned even now we've got our largest product to date which we're really excited about it's a 32 million dollar community center called Oscar Johnson Community Center that's going to be done with cross laminated timber so really looking forward to that get an opportunity to work on that one and keep expanding you know the type of products that we're working on so that's kind of how I got to where I am now and we're actually in a great position at Dudley Dunham right now we've got a great team and some of these guys we were fortunate when we acquired the Dunham division that came with us and other people I've been working on for years I know that Alexis you know okay so okay and I when I was working at Walter P Moore he was an intern at Walter P Moore and I have stayed in contact with him I probably reach out to him every six months for the last four years just trying to work on him you know like okay I think it'd be great if you came and joined I think it'd be great and somehow I fooled okay and he moved from Dallas down to College Station but I think he's loving it and to be honest like he it's he's doing great so he's already been he's been here a little over six months and he's been promoted to a team lead position and we have another young engineer Ryan Subrush who also got promoted to there so at this point I am not a project manager on any of our projects these team leads they manage their group of people and we're about 15 people total but at this point I'm primarily the principal and charge on a lot of these projects so I do do the final reviews I mean you know they come ask me questions but it allows me to focus more on business development I focus a lot on our typical detail library because I do the reviews so I see you know if we have repeat mistakes let's go fix it in our template because that's probably where it's happening that way we can you know knock down on those but that's where I'm at right now and yeah I've got a great team with us and I couldn't ask for anything better right now we just we need more time because we're all pretty young yeah that's not a bad thing though I I will say of all the things I'm very very thankful that okay is in a great place and then obviously he's kicking a lot of but I'm just disappointed he's no longer with us in Fort Worth but he's no fool so you must have given him a really tempting offer to get him to come down there and it sounds I'm looking forward to learning more about what you guys have down there that's kind of whatever the secret sauce is that's bringing in all these fantastic talented engineers but I am I'm just fascinated about the breadth of not only structural engineering project types and different materials that you've had an opportunity to design with but also even the the breadth of information you have about civil engineering having had all those different you know being having some time in construction and having some time um with with residential and all these different you know facets of the engineering and built environment that are probably make you a better engineer because you have a respect for those different aspects of a project and if I would add to that the other thing that I think is pivotal is my dad is a general contractor he's a commercial general contractor so I grew up from the age of 12 working as a laborer and estimating so I and I also teach in the construction science department at Texas A&M and I think that makes me a better structural engineer my mentor Walter B. Moore Bart Miller focused on this like even on most design bid build projects it's kind of the design team the contractor naturally pitted against one another but at the end of the day we're trying to get a successful building build if the contractor successful that's going to mean that we're successful so we really push that attitude and I think it helps that you know my whole life I've been hearing my father complain about engineers that you know don't work with them when they come into a problem on a project so we try to take the mentality of let's try reach a solution you know not dig our heels in yeah it sounds like a great career path to and great lessons I know you know I'm always like what your mindset is for the contractors that's that's always great because like you said end of the day everyone's trying to get things done and the more everyone come together and try to help others solve each other's problems everyone learns a lot and everyone's successful I did want to switch over to uh some of the ASCE SEI committee work I know you're a part of that and specifically the the board of governors they formed a committee for the reform of structural engineering education I believe it's also called crossy can you tell us more about what that is and what exactly a crossy's focused on yeah I'd love to and I'll probably butcher some dates and you know I won't get the exact quote but we can probably put a link they have a document that's out which puts all this up there but essentially they're in 2013 they came up with their 20 year plan so in 20 30 20 33 this is where they think the industry needs to be and they focus on a few things education being one of them there was education licensure technology globalization innovation and leadership so these are the facets of the industry that we need to focus on because our our industry is changing obviously the technology is changing quickly I mentioned fast track but you know fast track wasn't really a thing 50 years ago now it seems almost commonplace that we're doing projects like this so what what I and what I have focused on is the education one because I don't know maybe it's because I'm in a college town I'm fairly passionate about it I teach in higher education but their main point that they're pushing for education is that over time the universities have become much more research dominated and I'm going to talk about this later but research is extremely important to what we do in the industry because it pushes the envelope on the existing materials and system we have so we understand them better we can analyze them you know with less conservatism built into it and they also create new materials right and that's extremely important but at the same time we've got to have people that understand what we have now and know how to apply it to a construction project and in higher education there's just a strong emphasis for most of these tenure track faculty they've got to bring in research dollars research grants they've got to bring this stuff in and there's not a lot of focus on how good of an instructor they are so the instruction in my in my personal experience and again I talked to about eight other structural engineers coming into this interview because I wanted to make sure that I was not in a bubble you know because I had my own personal experience at healthy exercise yeah and you know and me and okay we talk about it in everyone in the office but again we could be in a vacuum so we talked to I know everyone's probably familiar with rinse haze out of Boston so you know on the other side of the country and he had a similar experience um you know it's not exactly the same but he agreed with most of the points that I brought up but and my uh I guess my solution and SEI has also come out with the solution and that crossy document is that we need to start introducing more adjunct professors and by adjunct they mean experienced design professionals people that are practicing PEs into the industry so that there is that the practical knowledge along with pushing the research envelope is uh because I'm trying to picture that too because I've been to you know the school systems too and is there like because our school's university is mostly focused on research I guess how would we bring in like adjunct professors I'm kind of wondering how we would incentivize that for for universities because I'm I'm guessing there's a reason why I'm guessing they you know they make money from the research etc but how do they get adjunct professors to I guess want to work it is a great question and I've been in higher education now for six years before I taught Texas A&M I taught at the University of Houston um and six years in I still don't really know the answer to that question I wouldn't had lunch with my department head to pick his brain and he explained it to me but you know still I don't know if it sunk in completely I just know like he re-emphasized that that is a huge part um because some of it you know like when a student pays tuition a lot of that does go to the university level not the individual department or college and then they get some of that back but they there's a big gap that they have to make up um and they have to fill that gap with research now I do think that there are situations like in my situation this semester I'm teaching a class of 200 students um and I won't go through go through like what you know the the tuition rate is but I it's fair to say they're probably doing pretty good off of me um and that's one thing that I will talk about is as as an adjunct faculty I do make it a priority and by that I mean if I have a work commitment that comes up and it interferes with my class you know I'll tell them I can't make that commitment I treat it just as similar as I would a client um but I have seen that be abused um at the different institutions I'm in and it's natural because um work you know usually is going to take precedence so there's a lot of canceling classes or you know having to somebody substitute in so you kind of get off track on the lesson plans but um so I think I don't think that adjunct professors like it's a you fit them in and automatically it works it's got to be people that can make a commitment to it and that are passionate about it um but I and I say again I would talk to Renz um talked to all the other engineers I talked to most of us had one practicing engineer in our experience through higher education and 100% of us said that was our favorite professor that we had now I'm talking to practicing engineer so we're going to be biased right if I talk to somebody that is focused on research they may say it was one of the tenured faculty I was also focused on research but I don't and again I don't know the exact breakdown but I would it's probably 90% of us go into practice 10% stay in research so I have to ask you mentioned that you are teaching a class of 200 which to me does not sound like an upper level level course it sounds like a more introductory or intermediate course is that correct or what course it's a senior level course um yeah students yeah it's I don't I don't know if it was the corona you know that led into this or online yeah yeah but usually it's about 100 students um so I don't I don't know what happened there but yeah 200 students this semester so where where is that where's the vision I completely agree and I think that there is a total value to having practicing instructors in in the undergraduate level um you teach an upperclassman course now is that where you kind of see that where this this difference in experience could be most complementary to the existing lectures that were already there or is it at the upperclassman level do you see where there's opportunities throughout the entire engineering degree plan where this could be beneficial how would you how would you want to put those two together to where they're complementary yeah and that's that that was one point where when I was talking to these eight other structural engineers where we did kind of differ um because and there's even one who only had an undergraduate didn't get a masters and so that was a good perspective for me to get because when I was thinking about it I'm focusing on a master's level but his thing was he wishes that you know we we can take a civil engineering degree with a structural emphasis but you still probably have to take wastewater you know circuits there's a lot of other general engineering classes that you still take um and basically what he was saying is he wishes that he could have focused you know taking some master's level courses if need be that focused on structures um and I don't I don't disagree with that I will say that SEI has explicitly addressed that in the same document I'm talking about and they do not recommend pulling structural engineering out of civil engineering um so I don't necessarily agree with that but I haven't heard their reasoning um for that and I'd be willing to listen to it and but you know it's I just I I don't know where that uh that's coming from that's fair I I have um had different exposure to ASEI and SEI as two separate entities at both you know the state and national level and I think uh part of the SEI vision that is shared with NCSEA and case they're all looking to you know to develop a similar vision and so I I couldn't tell you what the reasons are myself but I do know that when they send you know years developing these visions they're they're trying to do what's best for the industry so I'm I'd be curious to know what the reasoning is myself and I guess an example at the master's level I would give um the one class that the one class I made a B in in my master so maybe that's why I'm holding a grudge against it but advanced mechanics and materials where we learned about tensors and to be honest I still don't know what a tensor is which is probably why I got a B in that class um but I've never heard tensor in practice I don't think I'm going to use a tensor uh so that's an example of I wish that there was more of a practical focus and maybe the solution there is at the master's level you allow people to take more of a practice versus a research path in their career and some institutions do have this you can get a masters of engineering or a master of science um but even the master I did a masters of engineering I still you know I had to take advanced mechanics and materials um which to me wasn't beneficial to my career yeah I can definitely relate to that Drew so for me I'm in the west coast and I definitely see both sides because I got my undergrad I actually got my undergrad at one of those uh at Cal Poly Pomona and they kind of have like a brand of you know we train their mindset is training engineers for the industry and they deal a lot of our professors they were required to have their PE so you couldn't teach at Cal Poly uh if you didn't have your PE if you weren't working at least a couple years in the industry so from that point of view it was really practical you know all of our like wood concrete steel classes we were designing things per code and we had design projects all the time but then when I went to my master's I definitely saw that side of very theoretical like I didn't I was there for like three quarters in I didn't design a single beam it was a lot of like you were saying the tensors that's why I laughed at that because I was still like what's a tensor then yeah I go through all that stuff but it was like uh definitely don't regret it because you do get to see all the theory and the reasoning behind the codes because the codes come from the research so uh really great just getting both sides of it but uh yeah but if you just went to a theoretical school I could definitely see where uh you know you might lag behind especially in terms of if you go into a firm a lot of training a lot of self-studying to to get caught up with everything so I think yeah more schools could do that I don't know how they do that I think that's a big question but I know there there are some schools that are currently doing that but they're not common at all in the industry so we can piggybacking on that I would say like if I was going to say what items would I want included in a more practical course one thing that I find that most let's say 90 percent of graduating engineers and even some practicing engineers don't really understand diaphragms and diaphragms are greatly important to load path so those are the two that I kind of hung on to and when I was asking all these other structural engineers you know what did you learn about diaphragms when you were in college because again from my personal experience I can tell you I never heard the word and when my principal asked me after I had done my first eTabs model doing a lateral analysis you know like what did you do for the core forces in your diaphragm uh say what I like I didn't know either one of those words that you just said um and then the other one is load path so I know I heard the word load path um but I don't think that we focused on it enough because to me that's one of the more fundamental things that we do is follow that load path till eventually it gets down into the earth especially when we're looking at interfaces between different materials so we do look at load path in like steel class like we look at steel connection design right how do you transfer from the beam to the column but we don't ever look at how do you transfer that shear force out of your steel deck into your CMU shear wall you know and at that level of detailing um and making sure that you have a continuous load path that was not covered and that's something that I wish was covered because we focus hard on that bringing in our new graduates and interns that's kind of our crash courses load path and diaphragm because that's where you can have big mistakes right if you're not following that stuff yeah I definitely agree do you know what so I guess one of some things that they're trying to do are trying to implement in terms of um you know getting this across maybe are there any like measures or actions that the committee is trying to take uh that they're running into problems or because I know it's like I wish we could have it but then that's always the big question right how do we properly implement implement it what are we trying do you have any suggestions on what what to do on that yeah so I think I know the two concrete steps that they're taking right now is one is they are going to start pushing department heads to bring in more adjunct faculty and number two they do have a program called ASCE exceed which basically teaches you how to be a better instructor and that comes with an accreditation so I would like to see like even a bed accreditation be tied to you know do you have a certain number of lecturers that have this accreditation because it goes through like these are the you know pedagogy that really the students can latch onto the third one like I think they're going to come out with more they were supposed to come out with that in the summer of 2020 but you know some things happen in the world so I doubt that they really got to meet you know as often as they wanted to so I haven't seen that come out yet interesting I have one final question about this before before we kind of move on a little bit but you you mentioned that this this crossy committee was was created in 2013 and the goal was 2033 so we're coming up on 40 percent of our project timeline do you think that they've made 40 percent of the are we on track have we made 40 40 percent of the progress expected or you know do we still have a ways to make up are we ahead of schedule well so in my opinion I think they've hit the nail on the head I think they've identified those two issues that which I think are would be very beneficial but you know it's it's I'll go into this is my next point about you know in education we focus a lot on analysis and design but not a lot on how do you get that into construction documents which ultimately that's all that matters because if it's not on the plans it doesn't matter how good your analysis model is so I think that they've got a great analysis they've got a great solution now how do we push this to the universities and I don't think they've come up with a solution on how they plan to do that but I think ABET accreditation is where it would be the easiest because all the colleges care about that just a little bit gotta get some students to the door right and they want that accredited engineering degree if they're gonna be a PE one day yeah perfect so in kind of continuing on with this conversation about a well-rounded education and what makes it really well prepared um engineer to to enter the workforce I think you have a pretty strong position on the integration of internships and co-op positions for college students so they they have that experience and they get a little bit of a leg up on some of those employment opportunities um in your opinion is it better do a co-op with one company or multiple internships with several different companies so that's a great question I I think that it would really come down to a case by case basis I would say that more often it's probably going to lean towards it's going to be beneficial to have multiple different experiences um but the only reason I don't say that for everyone that's got to be the solution because um you may just the first one you go with may be a perfect fit for you they're doing projects that you're passionate about and their culture is just fits like a glove with you but um for most people I think that one you need to figure out what type of projects are you going to get passionate about you know I wasn't passionate about doing transmission and substation design some people are right I wanted to work on big stadiums and then I did a big stadium and then I was like well that was cool but now I'd rather be meeting the owner like I wanted more of an intimate level at that point um so you know different things tick for different people um and then also the cultural fit is a big one um I've worked uh now three different companies uh full-time um and the cultures were very different at all three of these companies um so and that's something that you can't it's hard uh to see based on looking at their website or looking at their LinkedIn page what is the culture really like right because people can put out good marketing campaigns but I think you actually have to be there for a while and even in an interview you know a two-hour interview um for both parties it's hard to really judge if it's going to be a great fit and that's one that we are doing in fact uh we're bringing in an architectural engineering student from Oklahoma State University um just bringing her in for one week during the winter break um and I actually I think I found her via LinkedIn I saw that she was engaged in the industry which told me oh man she's passionate um so I reached out to her we interviewed her you know Zoom interview um and we just to get to know her and let her get to know us um we're doing just a one-week internship which is really just a really long paid interview is what it's going to end up being but um to me like I think she's a rock star so we're trying to land her so you know but at the same time you can't fake it for a week right you can fake it for an interview but can you fake it for a week um so that's my thoughts on it absolutely I definitely get that I I also had a very so in uh kind of compare contrasting your very multifaceted internship history and um and the ability to kind of be at different firms I uh in throughout college you know had my obligatory summer with text dot so I worked for this the state and that clearly wasn't a good fit and I think I always preach that there's uh there's equal value in learning what you don't like as much as what you do like so you know I spent that summer and I learned a lot of valuable pieces of engineering wisdom and and knowledge that I wouldn't have otherwise got um I went to a private international environmental firm and I learned that I really enjoyed being in a big firm but I the environmental engineering was not for me uh and then I went into bridge design and it was the closest thing in practice and in design that I that felt closest to home uh but again it was one more step where I said this is this is closer and I like where we're going here but there's still something missing and you know you eventually it's important to have those different experiences because there's there's no experience where you learn nothing so you always come out having grown in some aspect but having those those different abilities to experience culture and cultural fit is something that um you know our younger listeners who may not have had an internship or have had a couple are starting to learn about and starting to see you know do I do I dive with these people does their mission the way they like to get work done you know do they stop the clock at 40 hours or do they max it out to 80 you know and and it depends on what you're willing to give and what is most valuable to you and for our listeners who listened to our last episode I know Drew has mentioned a couple of times friends talked about determining what your personal values are and making sure that they align with the company that you're looking for that's always always a good reflective exercise to see if you fit with the next place that you're looking at yep for sure I know yeah public private small large companies a lot of the cultures are very different so I also encourage you know while you're a student try to get as many internships as you can see what the different companies are like because sometimes it's not uh it's not the the work that you're doing might be like the way the environment is or the way the company culture is so yeah always encourage experimenting with those when you can uh Drew for for students that are looking for co-ops or internships do you have any tips or tricks or advice that you can give them I know it's it's competitive but what are some things that that could help them out so for me I mean I'm fairly active on LinkedIn so when I see other especially young students that are engaged in industry and you know they're engaged in the right things right they're like they're focused on structural engineering and you can just tell that it's something to have a passion for that one that puts them over for me they don't have to have it because most of them don't get on LinkedIn at that point but that's definitely a nudge in my direction the other thing is we always are going to check references no matter what and we put more stock usually in the references and we try you know let's say it's a somebody who's coming from experience not a new grad we would like to talk to one of their co-workers just because most often their boss is not going to give you the full picture due to whatever reasons but so we always try and do that so have a good list of references that you know that you can rely on I think that to me that's the biggest thing we put a lot of stock in checking back checking the references obviously we do the you know the interview but again you're only meeting with somebody for a couple hours so we do rely on that first students coming out we usually talk to their professors if I can I try to find somebody that they were in a group project with because to me that's where the you know the it hits the road did they pull their weight on that project or were they coasting and letting the rest of the team pull up the slack because I want the person that was you know at the forefront definitely pulling their weight because everything we do here is done in a team environment so that's also big for us for the new grads I feel like we may have just had a whole bunch of listeners who all went like collectively took a big gas because as important as it is and we we get a lot of questions I know Matt certainly does on his YouTube channel about the technical skills and the technology skills and the software skills that are needed to be a hireable and attractive talent to be brought into a new firm and everything that Drew just shared has nothing to do with that it I mean obviously you want to make sure they know how to calculate things and understand you know basic structural engineering that's what they got the degree for but two things I just picked up from what you said is don't burn bridges you have to be able to communicate with other people to work with other people teamwork and and having integrity in your work are huge and I'm I'm like super excited that you actually call co-workers instead of just bosses because I think you made a very good point about you know your past boss may not give the full transparent picture and a co-worker certainly has less on the line and it's probably going to be a little bit more forthcoming with information so yeah it's always important to make sure that you maintain your relationships and you play nice with others because it doesn't matter what firm you're in you always have to play nice with others and to any of our listeners who are in college you probably feel like you are in you know this organization or you're you're in an engineering school of a hundred five hundred thousand students and that there's tons of schools out there with engineers but the structural engineering community across the US is still a pretty you know it's it's a tight-knit community and it's the pond's only so big so you've got to really mind your pees and cues and make sure that you're always leaving with a positive interaction well said yeah and the other piece I wanted to thank you for is having a LinkedIn profile I do a lot of of outreach with high school and middle school students and I'm actually teaching them and like helping them get together their first LinkedIn profile and learning how to you know that you follow people you don't know and then you fall that you connect with someone who is a colleague instead of just following everyone because they're used to like a tweeting culture where you follow someone who tweets it's it's interesting because they haven't had to use a LinkedIn professional platform before but there is no greater time than now if you do not have a LinkedIn profile to start one and start cultivating content that is going to make you a better professional and following people that you emulate and admire and want to listen to and want to see what they're putting out there and contribute your own content when you feel comfortable in doing so because that is that I mean just like you said I look to to connect with people on LinkedIn that are contributing insightful comments here and there or who are posting an article that is helpful to the way I work and being a better contributor myself so yeah I agree with that free tool that you should use to to be a better professional in my class I give extra credit for them to set up their LinkedIn profile and I encourage them to connect with your fellow students because that's one I didn't have a LinkedIn profile in college I didn't start it until really I started looking at business development which is where most people kind of really get into LinkedIn when they're on the business development side but I wish I would have because most of my classmates are at potential clients you know they they're working at development firms or construction firms and I wish I'd done a better job you know staying in contact with those folks and LinkedIn is one way to do that absolutely I do want to dispel one myth I'm I'm not sure if this is common place but I have heard some engineers in different industries and geographies and different companies who have been kind of told this myth whether in their company or outside of it that says that if you have a LinkedIn it's because you're looking for a job and that doesn't have to be the case at all many of my colleagues will tell you I'm never leading healthy and I don't play it like they're gonna have to take my job from my cold bed hands when I'm 85 I'm never leaving healthy but I have a LinkedIn and I use it actively all the time and I don't use it as an opportunity to get new jobs and you should not feel intimidated by your employer ever to not have a LinkedIn profile because there's any sense of disloyalty to your firm if anything it should show it should demonstrate to your firm that you are eager to connect with others to build community to learn from other firms what is what's working better what's what's not how can we take that back and make ourselves better so if you ever feel that kind of intimidation you should very quickly dispel that that myth with your with your leadership because it's a platform for learning. LinkedIn is not paying us I swear but I'll plug LinkedIn for one other thing is you know I mentioned these eight structural engineers I reached out to them all through LinkedIn and and that's you know just direct messaging and they got back to me and they got back to me very quickly so you know kudos to them everyone in the industry is interested in this subject but that's where I connected with them that's where I usually try to identify who are other you know leaders in the structural engineering industry and then I will follow them so that's also been good but we use it a lot for recruiting ourselves you know just seeing people at other companies that are engaged but we're very even out of those eight guys we want to start a group kind of call it a google you know group it'll be our own little personal inch tips Matt's probably are you familiar with inch tips dot com yep yeah yeah I know that one Alexis you yeah yes familiar not an expert so I do I mean inch tips has a lot of good information on it but I will tell you that uh you got to watch yourself on the internet on the project at Kyle Field we were having a dispute with the contractor on a particular issue I posted a very generic post about this issue but like anybody that's familiar with it knows which project I'm talking about in my handle was like Tex Inge USA or something like wasn't too hard to figure out who I was in the next morning I got an email from the contractor with a snippet like hey Tex Inge USA so it doesn't look the most professional when you're posting to an internet chat board without a question but there are smart people on there and they did post some links to some documents which kind of backed up our position but still yeah just watch it maybe be more discreet with your username when you're not on a LinkedIn yeah for sure I know it's yeah LinkedIn free marketing but um it's interesting that you didn't even mention like your resume so it's like it kind of shows where you know the industry is going professionals are looking on LinkedIn and just like just like uh you found out Drew it's you found someone that was really passionate about it on LinkedIn and you reached out to them and even for students I encourage them to to reach out to to they can find people professionals that they just want to find out about the industry because you know they're in a theoretical university they don't know what it's like it's very easy if you like find professionals and just ask for like a 15 minute zoom interview just informational interview just ask them what the industry is like what their job's like maybe that's even a good way to get a feel for their culture and during the pandemic you know they're in their office they're not going anywhere so it's like a really easy ask that everyone knows how to use like zoom now so I also encourage students for that but thanks for giving that insight because I think that you know it's not just resumes anymore it is your your profile and even social media so that's really interesting uh Drew I think that just about does it for all the questions I know this is really interesting I know went on a little longer but I think that's I think that's great because I could keep asking more questions but you know we got to cut it down but thanks so much for being on and I really appreciate you coming on yeah thank you guys and I really appreciate what both of you guys are doing Matt you put out great videos which I push a lot of people to take a look at those videos and obviously Alexis I think it's great that you're here as well so people can see that it's not just you know males in the industry so I really appreciate what both you guys are doing thanks you really appreciate it absolutely thanks for thanks for joining us really this is awesome yeah we hope you enjoyed today's episode we'd love to hear your feedback comments and or questions to leave them please visit structural engineering channel.com there you'll find a summary of the key points discussed in today's episode which is episode number 35 as well as any links to any of the resources websites or books mentioned during this episode and don't forget to subscribe on apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast lastly before we go I want to let you know about EMI's new show this week in civil engineering also known as TWICE TWICE is a 10 to 20 minute weekly audio and video podcast hosted by practicing civil structural and geotechnical engineers bringing listeners the latest in industries you recognize that most of us don't have the time to lead up on all the news we'd like to anymore and soon we won't have to thanks to TWICE go check it out at www.twice.news that's twice.news and make sure to subscribe to the show to get your weekly updates until next time we wish you the best in all of your structural engineering endeavors