GEAUX JEAUX BLOG #5

Week #9: Mar 10

I may sound like a broken record, but this week had many fun firsts for my internship. I put to use the CAD standards guide from last week for SEED 50% CD’s. Will and I coordinated to split the work between the two of us, admittedly not equally, but it was very helpful to have him right next to me to be able to quickly ask for advice for troubleshooting, his workflow recommendations, and workload coordination. The sheets that I helped set up and create were the final versions of the concepts plans I did in InDesign, which helped both Will and I since I was the most familiar with these plans and the remaining ones were more technical and he was more familiar with. I worked on the planting area plan, tree removal and planting plan, soil plan, irrigation plan and lighting plan. It was nice to be able to do this process the first time with a smaller site, as when starting it was slightly overwhelming, but quickly becoming more approachable and less daunting because of the scale. For some out of office fun, I went inside Forest Park, with Ted, to help him lay out draft templates for engraving molds for donor names into the paving at the Waterways project that was recently finished. Though the wind had other plans and made capturing pictures of the templates difficult, even when I had gathered all the rocks I could find ☹. But Ted was able to get one decent picture and look at them all before we chased after them to be able to approve the font size for the engravings. Since we were already in Forest Park, Ted brought me over to the Muny Theatre construction site, explaining how this site he had originally done almost 30 years ago, and now gets to revisit it (and with a budget bigger than he could’ve imagined when first doing it!). It really put into perspective how our industry has changed so much, as well as made me realize how special it is that the Muny/ Forest Park continuously looks to Ted to design the space STL is known for. It was great to walk around the active construction site and see so many different contracting trades working simultaneously alongside each other. The site had to have over 50 men, ranging from plumbers, electricians, masonry, concrete, and probably even more than I recognized. I am grateful for not only the opportunity to experience it, but the have someone express their appreciation for the work the craftsmen do.  Later on in the week, I had a kick off meeting led by Wes, for the City of Mexico, Missouri parks and recreation parks system master planning followed by some quick research of the city and their parks/the existing information we had. Will and I are to work on building some inventory of existing conditions and basemaps for a upcoming kick-off meeting with stakeholders. I worked on Ozark existing conditions report and had a regroup meeting with Scott and Andy reviewing all the work I had done thus far. Scott explained that the contract still needed to be finished and signed before we should keep moving forward, and to find a good pause point for now on the efforts we started. I got to have a team chat with a potential intern named Sarah with Bri and Sam which is exciting as she may cross over and be at the STL studio alongside me if she gets the position! On Friday I had my first stakeholder meeting for the city of Mexico parks and rec master planning. We drove there to meet with the parks director and for a site visit, touring around town to all 12 parks to get a feel for them all and to take photos. It was helpful to see all the parks and to get a sense of scale. This stakeholder meeting was informative as I hadn’t been in an official meeting such as that one before. It was quickly clear the most people were either very passionate about one thing, or unsure what was needed, they just wanted the best for the community. The 9^th week at SWT was full of learning opportunities!

Week #10: Mar 17

I cannot believe that this is the end of week #10 of my internship! It truly has flown by but also I feel like I have grown so much in this time. All thanks to the diverse amount of projects that I have been working on Here are the projects that I worked on during my 10^th week:

-Continued SEED 50 CD sheet updates to planting plans and material diagrams. Will and I wrapped up most of the comments from Scott to continue moving forward for the next review.

-Mexico master planning; Worked on uploading site photos to correct photo, transcribing my notes from the meeting and site visit to a word document, and scanning all the documents that were wrote on during our stakeholder meeting as well as all the RFI information from the parks director so I could transcribe all notes onto one summary document, and analyze what we had and were missing from the RFI document.

-I started a finished a quick effort for Wes, creating a planting plan Missouri S&T University and then adding in photos of the plant during its peak color season, for a quick InDesign presentation of the seasonal color the garden showed off year-round.

-I also made progress on my internship project, working on my GIS mapping for inventory and analysis maps and general base mapping for later plan graphics.  As well as working on preliminary mapping of potential trail routes connecting Normandy Schools Collaborative and Mike Brown memorial site. 

-I also had a kick-off meeting with Bri and two Brentwood parks and rec workers (Sophie and Eric) to review the wants/desires/requirements for their new parks graphic that I will be working on. 

Overall, a condensed week in the office that ultimately flew by.