What is your current position? What is your area of focus?
I am a Plans Examiner for the County of Monterey, California. We have 3,280 square miles of land area and about 120 miles of Pacific Ocean coast line. Our jurisdiction covers such areas as the Monterey Bay coastline, the Monterey, Salinas corridor, Pebble Beach, Carmel and Carmel Valley, The Big Sur Coastline, the lettuce and produce fields Salinas Valley from north of Salinas, to the wine grape vineyards of the south county. We service agricultural, industrial, winery's, produce processing, industrial, to the Pebble Beach houses to bathroom additions and remodels.
What are your career journey highlights?
- I began with 3 1/2 years of drafting in high school. That proficiency tested me into a special Army drafting school that trains about 120 Army, Marine Army Reserve and National Guard per year. From that I was stationed in Ft Ord, California and Ft Shafter, Honolulu Hawaii with the Army Corps of Engineers.
- After five years in the Army, I was hired for my military drafting skills by a Mechanical Engineering firm in Monterey California. I was assigned to shadow a plumbing designer that was an ASPE member and went from plumbing draftsman to designer to lead plumbing designer/project manager.
- After 5 years as a design drafter, the ASPE member convinced me to join ASPE and I studied for the and passed the C.I.P.E. test. I also obtained a Associates Degree in Architectural Design / Drafting at a local Jr college.
- After 22 years, I decided to move on and took a position with a Fresh Express, the bag salad company that you see in almost every grocery store where I was a process designer/engineer/construction manager. After that I went to a design/build plumbing contractor and then to the Plans Examiner position.
What motivated you to get into the plumbing engineering industry?
The Army Drafting training was specifically laid out to take a young kid out of school with a little drafting background and give them enough background to throw them in an engineering battalion in a war zone and draw plans for the engineer trained officers. The training covered such things as civil, architectural, electrical, mechanical and plumbing drafting. When with the Corps of engineers I was exposed to drafting in all of the disciplines. When I ended my time in service my first civilian job was at a mechanical engineering firm and I was assigned to shadow a plumbing designer that was an ASPE member. My mentor was an excellent designer that did not like to draft, so he rapidly moved to doing calc's and giving me the raw data to layout and size. That eventually moved me into his position, and then to project management on the plumbing projects. By this time I had my CIPE/CPD and used my training to move into process plumbing engineering and construction management.
What is the most exciting or rewarding aspect of your work?
Actually as a Process Plumbing Designer, Engineer, and Construction Projects Manager, I was tasked with projects all over the United States. I was tasked with industrial water, chilled water, wastewater, industrial food chemical, sanitation and compressed air systems.
What value have you gained from participation in ASPE Connect?
I really enjoy first thing in the morning opening ASPE Connect to see the opinions that were entered the day before. The subjects covered are so vast and you look back and say I saw that before or I read that this should have been done that way. I really do appreciate the newer younger members come in and ask some tough questions and you sit back and think "how did I handle that on some project." Our members and their experience are so vast that there are areas of questions that I have never ventured into. I have never done the plumbing design on a high rise. But the Site Plumbing projects, I have done hundreds of them.
What is the most interesting plumbing design challenge you have encountered?
When I was with Chiquita /Fresh Express, one of my last projects was on a team of project managers and process engineers to convert a plastics manufacturing plant to a salad and fruit cold storage, washing, processing drying and packaging facility in a small town west of O'Hare Airport in Chicago suburbs. The team found the building, hired the A/E firm, developed and documented the process, guided the A/E team to building permits, and managed the construction on the 350,000 sf refrigerated produce processing facility.
What is your favorite hobby or pastime outside of work?
As a kid in high school, my dream was to be an architect. I was able to get the Associates Degree in Architectural Design and Drafting, but married early and after the military had the family and you know life gets in the way of dreams and aspirations. I did take that AS degree and start my own residential design and drafting for residential new, addition and remodels of residences. This will sound strange, but my favorite past time outside the family and grandkids is breaking out the parallel bar, tools and a drafting table I made in woods class as a high school junior and still use today and manually design and draft residential plans. When you can do drafting as an art for a homeowner, watch the construction and see the joy of a family move in, it may be more like a hobby, but it is sure a pleasure. But as a grandfather, there is nothing better than spending time with the wife, kids and grandkids.