Tom is an environmental engineer with a Maryland state environmental agency dedicated to managing dredged material containment facilities. The Chesapeake Bay and its various tributaries provide both an environmental and financial bounty to the state of Maryland and, as such, must be carefully protected. Dredging the Bay and its tributaries removes sediment from shipping lanes, thereby enabling deep draft ships access to the Port of Baltimore. Keeping the shipping lanes open is crucial to the viability of the Maryland Port Administration and to the economy of Maryland in general.

Insourced: What is your title at your company, and what are your job duties? Essentially, what do you DO?

Tom: I’m an associate engineer. Basically, the position involves a lot of topographic surveying, volume estimates, AutoCAD work, dredging permit applications, report writing and generating topographical maps. The big picture for our company is to manage dredged material containment facilities, or environmental restoration projects, to use the politically correct term. What I do is give our clients, the state port administration and the Corps of Engineers up-to-date topography, volume and capacity estimates for the facilities with which we work.

Insourced: Be honest, did you go into this career field because you like stomping around in the woods and water?

Tom: Oh, definitely. With a Biology degree, you never know what you’re getting into really out of college. You take a job because it’s better than the last…a decent job, in other words. That’s where I am right now, but I don’t get to go in the field too much anymore, unfortunately. I have people that do most of the field work. I could be out there if I wanted to, but I have too much office work nowadays and, really, being in the office and having others in the field achieves more for the company. That is the major reason I got into it, though. At least now I have to opportunity work with the outdoors, but not directly in the outdoors. I get to direct what’s going on out there, which is still a good feeling.

Insourced: What career and educational path did you take to obtain your position?

Tom: Undergrad biology degree and a minor in chemistry from Mount Saint Mary’s College…my graduate degree in biomedical engineering helped me get my foot in the door at the company, but doesn’t really apply to what I do. It showed them I have a master’s degree in engineering, but doesn’t do anything for me otherwise.

Insourced (laughing): Mount Saint Mary’s, the “Harvard of the Catoctins” right?

Tom: You know it!

Insourced: What about the career path that led you where you are?

Tom: I had no career path! I remember coming home from graduation, thinking “that was nice, what do I do now?” My history was that I just got a job at an engineering firm as a peon to gain some experience, then at a lab at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, which allowed me to take classes at night for free. Then I started looking around for other jobs, which led me to the company. The thorn in my side now is what do I do from here on out, you now? I’ve been interviewing a lot lately and people are excited to interview me, but I have a very diverse background and experience that is so specific that it’s not very marketable. So I’ve been pigeonholed to some extent…I have a family to support, so I have to make the same money I make right now, but I’d also like a change of pace at this point.

Insourced: What type of education is generally required to get into the field?

Tom: The field we work in is, very basically, environmental. Environmental science or even better, environmental engineering would be the best to get into the field. A master’s degree will get you higher up the food chain, especially at the state, because a lot of job descriptions here at the company require a master’s degree in a related field.

Insourced: What’s it like being a quasi-government agency?

Tom: To my knowledge, it’s the same at working directly for the state. I’m essentially a state employee. Working for the state offers great health benefits, which is very important right now having two little guys in diapers. One frustration is that if you do a really good job, you don’t really get properly compensated for it like in the private sector. As a result, many state employees end up thinking “well, I get paid the same if I do the bare minimum or if I bust my ass, so what’s the use in trying?”. I have tried very hard to push myself and hold myself more accountable during my time here though.
Insourced: You also are a manager, of both people and projects. As a manager, is it more difficult dealing with your superiors or your employees?

Tom: Good question. It depends on the person, obviously, but with me I have two employees, one of whom bends over backwards and wants to do a good job and get the work that I need to have completed. The other is going through each workday all willy-nilly and when I ask for something on a deadline, he doesn’t do much to help out. He also knows too much about the government structure and knows that he’s pretty much untouchable. Over half of his job entails physically demanding field work, but I need his help in the office too. It turns out that he’s next to useless there, though.

As far superiors, it’s frustrating sometimes, especially when you’ve been someplace for a long time and your superiors come in and start running the show, only have one year of experience at our company and don’t typically ask you how things are going. When they do and you tell them, they still don’t listen. I’ve been at the company for six years, and I’ve had this happen on numerous occasions. At times they’re two-faced too, telling you one thing and their superiors something else altogether, so that’s really hard to deal with. Ultimately, it’s all office politics. I think it’s easier to work with subordinates, but that depends on who they are. In the private sector, it may be less irritating to deal with subordinates because they know they have to work hard to get ahead.

Insourced: It sounds like you’d really prefer to work for in the private sector? Is that the case?

Tom: I do - sometimes I feel like I’m surrounded my monkeys – literally - I feel that the Career Builder commercial with the monkeys jumping around applies to my situation. But on the other hand, at this point in my life, with two kids in diapers, the flexibility and being able to put it on cruise control when I have to is a bonus. I want to go into private industry, but I’m a little apprehensive because it’s going to add more stress to an already stressful life. I’m sort of in limbo because of that.

Insourced: Is this industry rewarding for you personally? Financially?

Tom: I would say that it’s rewarding on both fronts. You have to pay your dues. As far as financially rewarding, the more experience you have the more you’ll make, obviously. In order to climb the ranks you need to get your PE (professional engineering certification). This could be a hurdle for me because I have a master’s in biomedical engineering rather than a bachelor’s in civil engineering. Typically the study associated with the bachelor’s degree is heavier on the basics that are required to attain the PE, so I’ll have to study really hard to catch up on those points. Once you have the PE, though, it allows you to stamp drawings and submit them to the state or company that needs the review.

As far as being rewarding personally - I just met with a landscape architect and he works with building roads and working on various projects that requiring working with existing streams. In the past, before engineers realized that runoff was detrimental to the Bay, they would simply channel streams to get them out of the way of the site. Now we want to take high-velocity channels and create meanders and check-dams that try to slow the flow of storm water, thereby enabling suspended solids and other bad stuff (heavy metals, petroleum) to perculate into the soil. That decreases sediment and nutrient load to the Chesapeake Bay.

Insourced: What is your favorite aspect of this job? Least favorite?

Tom: My favorite aspect is the big picture, even though sometimes I lose sight of it by being in the office all time. We’re creating habitat for aquatic species and birds in the area. My least favorite is being in a state agency with the hoops to jump through to accomplish anything – things that would take less effort in a private company.

Insourced: Do you have any future plans within the industry?

I do. I’d like to hopefully soon get my foot in the door in a private sector company and be compensated what I feel I’m worth and continue the growth in my career, which I’ve felt has stagnated.

More and more I’ve been thinking about landscape architecture. I’m going to try to do whatever I can do with the least amount of schooling required. I think I’ve been around enough and had enough education at this point to learn on the job.

Insourced: Is this your dream job? If not, what is?

Tom: Definitely not. If I could do anything, regardless of income and location, I’d want to be an outdoor guide – a ski guide in the British Columbian Rockies.

Insourced: If you let me snowshoe instead of ski, I’ll be there with you. Thanks a lot Tom for talking with me today, and good luck in your new job search.

Tom: No problem. Thanks Matt.

Tags: cheasapeake bay, environmental engineer jobs, maryland environmental service

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