The City of Minneapolis Department of Public Works is responsible for maintaining the city’s physical infrastructure and for providing a variety of services to those who live, work and play in Minneapolis. Those activities are coordinated through three business lines: Transportation, Utilities, and Administration. I oversee transportation and utility.
The department employs over 1,000 full-time personnel and has an annual operating budget of $335 million for the operation of its nine divisions: Business Administration, Solid Water and Recycling, Surface Water and Sewers, Water Treatment and Distribution, Traffic and Parking Services, Transportation Engineering and Design, Transportation Planning and Programming, Transportation Maintenance and Repair and Fleet Services.
What’s a typical work day?
My days generally revolve around maintaining the city’s infrastructure and planning for the future. Daily discussions can range from water treatment plant infrastructure to storm tunnels 100 feet below the surface to bridge design or creating a plan to move the city towards our zero waste goals. In addition to infrastructure, we invest time in safe work practices, employee development, and new technology. The part I like best is helping the public and making Minneapolis better for today’s generation—and future generations!
What qualities are important for this position?
Technical competency is definitely key to being a city engineer, and then there are several others I would highlight in no particular order: communication skills, integrity, work ethic, creativity, ability to work with others, and problem solving. If you aren’t able to communicate your technical plans to elected officials or the community in a manner they can understand, you will find it very difficult to engage them or even be able to address their concerns.
What about technical skills?
Time management, problem solving and using data to determine solutions are very helpful!
What training were you offered for your position?
I started with a civil engineering degree and then had the opportunity to work in several different areas of municipal engineering to help provide me with a broad background.
I am very proud of my team and the work we do every day to make Minneapolis better every day.
Most challenging?
You can’t solve every problem immediately. Solving many of our infrastructure challenges require significant financial investments, technical design time, and time to build or rebuild—this is often difficult for people to understand and, therefore, they get frustrated.
Having a civil engineering degree gives you the opportunity to have a career that can be very fulfilling and rewarding in so many different ways—from helping provide basic service like drinking water to designing and building the next big iconic piece of infrastructure. Keep your options open and find something you enjoy!
Any other advice you’d like to share?
I would encourage you to take some time while you are in school to meet with different engineers in different types of jobs to best understand what might interest you most. Plus, knowing people in the field can definitely help make connections to jobs!
