A day in the life of a Senior Engineer

A photo shows the internal space of Max Fordham London office

No two days are the same as a Senior Engineer at Max Fordham. In this journal, David Montgomery takes us through a day of his working life. 

My day begins in a relaxed manner, as I catch up with colleagues. Whilst it’s great to chat with everyone in the office, once back at a desk my attention turns to completing some “proper” work. The two key tasks I need to complete today are review a draft set of drawings our internal team have produced and circulated to the project’s design team ahead of the upcoming end of stage issue and follow up on some items following a site visit at the end of the last week. I decide to start off the drawings and as ever looking back over these with fresh eyes highlights a few bits and pieces that need to be picked up before the final issues, but fortunately there appear to be no major errors!

Once I’ve finished reviewing drawings, I take the opportunity to catch up with members of my team. One is in their first few weeks in job and had some tasks to finish off from last week. We run through these to make sure they’re happy they understand the concepts involved and then introduce him to something completely different. The other is back from their holiday (to Italy) and has caught back up with things so we have a quick chat and I can brief them on tasks they can get on with as well as upcoming projects that will start in the next few weeks. Whilst we’re talking, a colleague makes full use of being in the office and goes for the common slow walk around the floor to see who might be able to help them with a query. That someone ends up being me, so after one chat I then end up discussing planning requirements, which then, as is often the case with these sorts of chats, goes slightly off-topic and we end up talking about something else.

In the afternoon I have a meeting with the team of quantity surveyors for the same project I reviewed drawings for earlier in the day. We run through the outline design proposals for the building to make sure they understand what they need to include in their cost plan and allow them to raise any queries they have. This also provides us with some useful feedback on what information is currently not picked up by our drawings or is unclear.

With my only external meeting of the day out of the way, it’s time to make a quick cuppa and then focus on completing my site visit related tasks. With photos filed, documents reviewed, site inspection reports updated and associated emails sent, this all but marks the end of the day. It just leaves a quick call with my Director to catch up on a new project that’s about to kick off. Once done I decide I’ve done enough for the day so pack up and head off to enjoy the sunny evening!