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Ashley Ross
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Ashley Ross
IMSE Undergrad Class of 2014
Boeing
Who is Boeing? “Boeing is the world’s largest aerospace company and leading manufacturer of commercial jetliners and defense, space and security systems.” (www.boeing.com) They manufacture commercial airliners, and defense, security and space systems. They are America’s biggest manufacturing exporter to over 150 countries worldwide.
Role: Facilities Project Administrator
A Day in the life of a Facilities Project Administrator:
Every day is a new day with new “fires to put out”. In my specific location in St. Louis, Missouri, our group was organized to maintain different sets of buildings. I was in charge of around 1 million square feet of space spread over about 6 buildings. I had a maintenance manager for my set of buildings that I worked closely with on a daily basis. There were also administrators for the personnel in the buildings that became a main contact for gaining access to certain areas (as some required escorting due to confidential information in the area that required clearances). They played a key role in figuring out what the people in the buildings truly wanted or needed help completing.
Not all aspects of this job were glamorous by any means. Some people go into engineering thinking they won’t have to do the dirty work because they have a degree. That is NOT always the case. I had to trace gas/water/power lines through buildings, climb around and over old motors to equipment that needed documented, get out in the elements of construction projects that we were running, and more. Looking back, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
The day started early. I am at my desk at 6 AM. I wake up around 4:30am to get my day started and get ready and have enough time to drive the half an hour to work. Below is a timeline to show how my day went:
4:30 AM: Get up and get ready for the day
5:15-5:30 AM: Commute to work
6:00 AM: Unpack my computer and start to answer the seemingly never ending issue emails from the evening before. COFFEE!
7:00AM: Staff Meeting
7:30 AM-2:30PM: Work on “hot” items out of the staff meeting that needed immediate attention if any. Once the hot ticketed items were taken care of, it was time to finish addressing the emails from the morning. Once completed, the work orders in queue for my building were top priority.
A work order consists of a ticket coming in from a building occupant that had a request. The requests ranged from needing a new chair, to moving cubes to offices needing repainting. It was my job to assign these tickets to the appropriate maintenance staff to get the job done. Meetings consisted of a mix of staff meetings and meetings with outside vendors working on the projects that I was involved in. This was my work day in a nut shell with a lunch break thrown in there somewhere.
2:30 PM: Go home! Well, if I didn’t have a large group move or construction project that required me to stay longer.
Why chose facilities management as a career option: The possibilities are endless! Your day is never really the same, so you shouldn’t get bored easily. You also get to interact with different groups and vendors with both, so it’s not the same faces all the time which is nice.
Most surprising thing I didn’t expect coming out of college: Having been with two different companies already, I didn’t expect well to be with two different companies already! However, I did that for personal reasons and not career oriented reasons.
My 2 cents: Make sure that you really think out career changes before you make them. Determine the true reason you want to make them, in three to five years from now is that still going to matter as much to you? Can you make the changes you want to achieve by moving around internally? Think about it.
