Friday, November 9, 2007

what i do(n't do) at work

i have told many of you what i do for work. i haven't explained what i do for work but to a few of you because it would be one of those conversations where you just nod along and pretend to understand when you really don't because you have already lost interest. it's ok. i would do it too. also, it is a pretty unusual workplace environment right now. allow me to explain a bit.

i work for the City of Charlotte in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities Department (CMU or CMUD). i am an intern; a temporary employee. they (we, i guess) are currently in the thick of a very large and state-of-the-art project. this project is called the CMU GIS* Foundation Project. it is currently in Phase IV. the goal of the project is to convert our old data on water and waste water utilities into a new, more computer-friendly and spatially accessible format. what the boof does that mean? therein lies the problem of me trying to explain it to you in person...

the old data for these projects (by "projects" i mean every water or waste water line, sewer, manhole, valve, reducer, meter, and fitting serviced by CMUD... think about that...) are housed in paper documents called as-builts. an as-built** is a blueprint-esque document which is made to represent on paper exactly what the project looks like as it is built underground. as you can imagine in a constantly growing, expanding and transitioning city, there are thousands of these as-builts, some dating to the inception of utilities in the city.

the as-builts are scanned to the network using a huge scanner (as they are about 2' x 3' and are stored rolled up). then me or someone else will draw into the GIS (the computer program which is essentially a virtual map with layers such as parcels, aerial photographs, streams, roads, etc.) where the pipes, etc. from the as-builts go in the real world. to simplify that a bit, we digitize the paper map and use that image to draw into the computer the water and sewer lines that are on the drawing. all of these lines and attributes for the lines are stored in databases on servers on the network.

the vast majority of this work was already completed when i got here (as it was part of a previous phase). like i said before, with a changing and updating city, new projects and repairs are always being completed. when they are completed, the as-builts for those new projects need to be processed and added to the existing virtual map. so that's what we do... when we are given as-builts. right now we have no as-builts and haven't had any in days.

so why did they hire you when there are plenty of other people who can take care of this task?

the 4th phase of this project is happening now. that phase is a bit complicated. the as-built drawings don't contain nearly the amount of information that is available on water and waste water utility projects. for example, as-builts do not always list water meters for each house, sewer service lines for each house and do not list GPS coordinates of anything. therefore, when the as-builts are draw in by us here, they aren't necessarily correct because we just kind of eyeball where the lines go.

CMU has contracted with an outside company to go around the county and collect GPS data on all of the utilities along with a long list of attributes for those utilities. these are examples of a few attributes which would be collected: intake and outtake elevations (above sea level) for manholes, manhole cover diameter, water and waste water pipe material, and in-field availability of manhole covers (ie covered over or not). lots of detailed stuff. and that's just a sampling.

this company specializes in going out into the field and collecting raw data. they do not yet specialize in manipulating that data into special formats, such as the format CMUD needs it in. they think they have the ability to specialize in such data manipulation, and being able to put a successful conversion project with the City of Charlotte on their resume would effectively prove that to future clients.

they do not yet have such abilities.

CMUD has rejected the data that they have delivered (for only the very first section of the county) twice now and is starting to wonder if it is even a good investment of time and money to continue to do business with them.

i was hired, along with another intern, to work with this data that has now been rejected twice and has an ominous future.

so, erich, what do you do at work?

the internet is my friend. this is what i do at work (seriously):
- Ace & TJ on Kiss 95.1 until 10AM
- Gmail
- Google Talk
- Pandora
- ESPN
- CNN
- FOX News
- The Daily Tar Heel***
- Tar Heel Blue
- Inside Carolina
- The Weather Channel
- NOAA
- Intellicast
- i try really hard to avoid this one and this one
- anything that you suggest i read

that's usually a pretty good day's work right there.

am i frustrated with not having any work to do? yes. i get bored very easily there. i would gladly do something other than stare at two very nice LCD screens all day like filing, organizing, moving boxes, running errands or anything like that... anything to be productive short of custodial work. but they don't really have anything for me to do. it is to the point now that no one in my area has anything to do.

hey... i'm getting paid for it...

NEXT BLIG ITEMS:

- A Contract with Manish
- Why I Wait Until Black Friday

see y'all soon and thanks for reading the long post


*what is GIS?
** here is an example of an as-built. this is not one from CMUD because i am bound under a confidentiality agreement not to release any of the files i have access to because, understandably, they are sensitive materials.
*** for all you Carolina alums out there, i read the 2007-2008 UNC Basketball Preview in the DTH on friday. good stuff. and yes i know i can use other symbols as footnotes. i choose not to.

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