CEA - Tips to Becoming A Transportation Engineer with Brent Chase

Even though life is full of challenges and sometimes it makes us uncomfortable with where we’re at, more often than not, these individual situations are just steps along the way to something better. Doesn’t matter if you currently are on the job hunt or working with something that you may not be as passionate about as you thought you would, our guest today — who went from bus driver to transportation engineer — explains that these are just part of the process.

Brent Chase is a transportation and project engineer at David Evans & Associates (DEA), focused on the design and construction of roads and highways. After graduating from university, he went to Logan, Utah, so that his wife could start her college program. Even though he had a really good knowledge base and internship experiences, he could not find a job in Logan right away. Therefore, he ended up being a bus driver for a while. Obviously, the goal had always been to work as an engineer, but he didn’t let this temporary condition take him off the track he wanted to go. In fact, the time he spent as a bus driver helped him get to know the city better and he later applied this knowledge to his transportation role at his company — He would think in terms of bus routes!

In today’s episode, Brent mentioned his most memorable project, and why it carries that much sentimental value to him, as well as mentioning his current work on the Aurora-Donald Interchange Project in Oregon. He goes on to talk about the most challenging situations we face when becoming civil engineers, the need for engineers to build connections wherever and whenever possible, and also the benefits that can come out of being a reliable professional in your organization

Resources Mentioned

Some links below are affiliate links, which means that at no cost to you, I receive a small commission for recommending products and services that I personally recommend and I think you'd enjoy too.

Brent Chase - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-chase-pe-31308652

David Evans and Associates - https://www.deainc.com

FE Reference Handbook - https://account.ncees.org/exam-prep/387

How to Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnegie - https://amzn.to/3bWL2YjLink

Aurora-Donald Interchange Project - https://www.oregon.gov/odot/projects/pages/project-details.aspx?project=19062

OpenRoads - https://www.bentley.com/en/products/product-line/civil-design-software/openroads-designer

Civil 3D - https://www.autodesk.com/products/civil-3d/overview

AutoCAD - https://www.civilengineeringacademy.com/autodesk

PLS-CADD - https://www.powerlinesystems.com/plscadd

School of PE - http://www.civilengineeringacademy.com/sope

KiwiCo - http://civilengineeringacademy.com/kiwi

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