Job Shadow

I decided to shadow with Clint Hutchings, he is a GIS professional with the West Jordan City Public Works Department.  I met Clint in his office at the West Jordan City Hall at 1:00 pm on February 9^th 2011.  He said that we were going to go out on the field and meet up with some people. I watched him as he was converting files from his CPU towards his laptop.  The files included updated information on sewer lines located throughout the city.  The software that they use there is ArcMap 10 and the sewer lines where put into sections of the city.  For example, A1 showed an area with lines, G7 was somewhere totally different. 

            Once he got everything ready to go on his laptop, we went outside and got into a city vehicle.  The destination was to go and meet up with some public works professional at their work station.  The work station was way out west, located at about 4000 W and 8030 S. 

We went inside the building and talked to the receptionist, she said “go ahead on back, they are expecting you”.  As we walked down the hall, there were a few offices with people that Clint recognized.  We stopped to say hi and he told them what our plan was.  Eventually we got past the offices and into a very large garage. Inside the garage were all kinds of city vehicles, pumps, machines, and material.  It wasn’t too loud in there but it sounded like they were very busy.  We finally got to our destination and it was a big white truck.

            This truck was no ordinary truck; it looked like a big white box on the back end, with no windows.  We were told to go inside through the back of the truck.  Inside the truck was a bunch of pipes, machines, and gauges. I remember the smell of grease was potent inside.   Near the front of the truck we met two workers that are specialist with sewer and storm drains.  I got to see the coolest remote control car ever made!  It’s a snake control car that has a video attached to it.  The workers are able to send the robot looking car through the sewer and check for any blockages in the pipes.  The video is sent to the Truck on a screen. 

            Finally Clint got to work and hooked up the laptop to the trucks computer system and was able to update the sewer lines.  I was able to input some of the data myself on the computer and learned a few GIS tricks on editing. I really enjoyed the field trip and appreciated the time to shadow Clint.