As a civil engineering major and a huge travel buff, I was crushed to realize that the summer of my junior year I would have to decide between my long-time dream of going to Europe, and working for a few months to gain solid experience. However, after I was introduced to the International Honors Program at Duke, I learned that I could actually combine them both by working in a foreign country-thereby gaining valuable work experience while traveling around the world!

Geotecnia y Cimientos, S.A., or commonly known as GEOCISA, is a civil engineering firm centered in Madrid, Spain. The company's name, literally translated as Geotecnics and Foundations, explains the basic scope of GEOCISA's work: analysis of soils and foundations in various projects throughout Spain and in other countries. They are a subsidiary of the larger and well-respected engineering and construction group known as Dragados.

I worked closely with Luis de Ramón on a project in Polopos, a city in southern Spain that is situated at the mouth of a dry riverbed. The purpose of the project was to analyze the various ground water levels in the region, eventually determining, through various experiments and analyses, the most lucrative manner of retrieving water from the underground aquifers. It is easier and more profitable to pump water from regions where the ground water was closer to the surface. Specifically, I drew elevation, topographical, and soils maps for the area of interest, and created graphs which expressed the results of the water extraction trials.

Most of the current efforts of GEOCISA, however, are channeled towards the amplification of the Metro of Madrid. The Madrid provincial government has funded a multi-billion dollar project, which adds, joins, or extends almost all of the metro lines. This project, slated from 1995 to 1999, is a very ambitious public transportation work, especially due to its relatively small time frame.

Comprised of 117 km (73 miles) of track, spanning 158 stations on 11 lines, the Metro of Madrid is currently the tenth longest underground railway network in the world. The current amplification project, broken up into thirteen projects, which require the addition of 55.8 new kilometers of track (34.7 miles) and the construction of 39 new stations. I had the opportunity to visit different sites where GEOCISA was testing with various instruments, used to measure displacements in the soil when the tunnels are created. These machines included inclinometers, piezometers, and extensometers. GEOCISA employees explained to me the costs and benefits of different methods of tunnel building, from open-ceiling tunnels to the more recent methods of using fast, expensive tunneling machines for the job.

By far the greatest concern of GEOCISA when working on any project is safety. The engineers explained that statistically speaking, they should anticipate several job-related deaths during the course of the five years. Because it is such a large-scale project, greater care must be taken into maintaining the highest amount of safety for all employees. One interesting practice is to place a small statue of the Virgin at the front of each tunnel boring machine, or TBM, to watch over and provide protection for the entire crew during the course of the project. This might seem rather unusual in North America, but is very common in Spain.

Overall, however, what the engineers of the Community of Madrid and various companies in the province are doing is not much different than those of the United States, or anywhere else in the world. Through conversations and experiences with my coworkers in the GEOCISA's Madrid office, I learned that they face the same everyday problems as other people around the world. A Spanish network copier does not understand country differences; it gets jammed just as often as an American one. Likewise, Spanish engineers who underestimate the amount of time needed to complete a project face the same difficulties as those who are from the United States.

Caracas, Venezuela - June/July 1998

This past summer my work experience took a new turn with the opportunity to go to Venezuela and work for Otepi Consultores, S.A., an engineering and construction firm based in Caracas. Although I had a chance to go back to GEOCISA, I decided the experience of going to a new country (and continent!) would be more valuable. As it turned out, I am thrilled with the outcome.

My job at Otepi was twofold; in June I designed the intranet for the engineering department, and in July I worked in the structures department calculating Bills of Materials (take-offs) for a oil refinery construction project in central Venezuela.

The 1990's have often been characterized as the "Information Age," with this mind-boggling phenomenon we all have come to love and hate known as the Internet. What many people don't understand, however, is the usefulness of an intranet within a company, or a series of web pages that are accessible only within the company. This enables company information such as procedures, organizational charts, and project details to be accessed without the fear that any 13-year old boy can view the information from his room (or for a more pertinent example, that a competing company can find it out). When I arrived at Otepi, the intranet was a disaster; most of the pages read "Under Construction" and were decorated with obnoxious blinking lights and gaudy images. My challenge, then, was to start from scratch and design an effective layout for providing useful, easily accessible information for the employees.

I had two major goals for this new intranet: (1) to provide concise, accurate, up-to-date information for employees (one-way) and (2) to create an interactive environment where employees can view, modify, and save AutoCAD images and company procedures (two-way). The first part was relatively simple. I worked closely with Juan Branger to create the various sections for the intranet; i.e. descriptions of the different engineering departments; an organizational chart, recent news, and extensive information about the Sistema de Diseño de Plantas, or design software program for 3-D modeling. The second aspect was more complicated, as it required research into the Whip! program, a utility which enables AutoCAD drawings to be viewed online. The advantage of having all drawings on one computer (a network server) is that it frees up hard drive space in personal computers and keeps master copies in one location. Employees, such as CAD Designers, can then copy and paste these drawings into their own computers and delete if necessary. Moreover, the access speed of these images is exceedingly fast using the Whip! program, whereas the sometimes 15-megabite drawing files are normally very unwieldy to open. In all, both the company and I were very pleased with the new intranet.

I finished with the web construction work by the end of June, at which time I decided to try to get some experience more directly related to my major: civil engineering. The Structures Department was in need of some assistance to complete Computos Metricos, or Bills of Materials, so in the course of the next month I learned to do them effectively. I calculated the amount of excavation, backfill, soil dump, concrete, steel, and other quantities for various buildings in a huge oil refinery station in central Venezuela. Owned by Sincor Upstream, these buildings will house machinery used to extract and refine petroleum, as well as provide living quarters for all people working there. Because the location of this project is far from any large cities, it needs to be completely self-sufficient. The buildings on which I worked include a fire station, a laboratory, and a recreational center (complete with basketball courts!).

My work experience at Otepi was a great introduction to the working world of construction and design. However, I learned far more from observing and speaking with the people of Caracas. Despite being stricken by poverty and equipped with only beer and petroleum as their major exports, venezolaños have an amazing sense of pride and a certain knack for having fun. Maybe this has to do with the fact that the majority of residents are teenagers or in their mid-twenties, or possibly that Polar beer is the second largest industry behind PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A.), the petroleum firm. Whatever the reason, it was definitely eye-opening to meet people with such warm hearts and positive outlooks on life who have so little "wealth" in the economic sense, as traditional society defines it. Normal household items such as microwaves, clothes dryers, and even hot water are often considered luxuries. I had none of those conveniences for most of the time that I was there, and it truly made me appreciate these little things that I normally take for granted.

The International Honors Program is a great way for students to obtain practical work experience and a deep understanding of another country and culture at the same time. At Duke, through Comparative Area Studies classes, the IHP student then takes his or her work-abroad experiences and applies them to modern-day public policy and sociology issues. Thus, a more international education is achieved, and the Duke experience is truly enriched.

The summer engineering internship does not come without any difficulties, however. First, there are not many established foreign contacts for students to talk with. When seeking the summer employment, I started by contacting American companies, Spanish companies, Duke alumni, and anything else I could think of. No one, however, seemed to be willing to hire a 19-year-old American with little experience who lacked fluency in the Spanish language. Thus, I worked through any and all contacts that I had, and finally succeeded. However, not everyone has had the fortune of hosting a Spanish exchange student, whose father happens to be CE professor! Therefore, more established contacts need to be made with various cities and countries in multiple disciplines, to facilitate the initial job search of future Duke IHP students.

My two summers at GEOCISA and Otepi flew by very quickly, but I did have a chance to do some travelling, which was a dream come true. I danced with teenagers from New Zealand in a London pub known as the Outback. I got lost in the winding Paris streets and emerged on the busy Champs-Elysses, facing the breathtaking Arc de Triomphe. I went paragliding in Interlaken, Switzerland, where the towering Alps meet crystal-clear blue-green lakes. And I now have friends in Venezuela who have proven to be some of the most caring, honest, and sincere people that I have ever known.