What do you do for a living?

I’m the operations manager for a tower company, a company that builds broadcasts and communications towers, but I got my start climbing up and down them.

How would you describe what you do?

We do everything that’s involved with building and maintaining a tower.

What does your work entail as a tower climber?

We build the towers, we take them down, we put the lights on them, we change the lights, we paint them, we scrape them, we run the antennas and lines.

When you go up a tower and you’re climbing 400 feet, you’re not coming down to get a cup of coffee, you’re not coming down to warm your hands, you’re not coming down for a lunch break. When you go up the tower you’re going to be there all day, it’s kind of like being like a mountain climber.

One of the more interesting things for most tower climbers is when they do a really high re-lamp, because most of them they’re are at night, and the broadcast towers could be 1,000 or 1,500-foot tall. They take the station off the air at one or two a.m. and you’re climbing in the wee hours of the morning changing the bulbs. Continue Reading …

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What do you do for a living?

I practice general architecture.

How would you describe what you do?

Architects are responsible for anything to do with designing a building or structure.

What does your work entail as an architect?

What I do normally do is I start the design and the project from the very beginning to where I hand it off to one of the other architects in the office where they actually do the working drawings and specifications. I do a lot of preliminary design where I’ll meet with the client, determine what their program is, analyze the site, determine what can be built on site, how big of a building it is, and the preliminary budget.

The greatest thing that I like about it is simply walking into a building after you’ve designed it…and realize that this was a figment of your imagination…Then when you’re done, you’ve got a building standing there. The old saying is, “Doctors bury their mistakes, architects get to drive by them every day.”

I then I do some preliminary building arrangements, or floor plans and elevations and sections so that you can actually see what the building will look like, how big it will be and how it’s arranged and how well it suits their program. It’s mostly done in the office, but of course we’ll meet with clients and go out to sites and I’ll also sit in front of the computer a lot and draw. But, as you get higher up in the hierarchy of an office, you do more client contact and marketing for things outside the office, where a young architect will probably sit there most of the day and draw. Continue Reading …

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What do you do for a living?

Construction and Real Estate development.

How would you describe what you do?

I oversee and manage construction and real estate developments for a commercial construction company.

What does your work entail?

We do is anything from land development to the finished product, commercial products, and multi-family products. I’m basically in charge of the initial start of project, all the from when we turn dirt to the finished product.

How did you get started?

My family’s in it and I kind of just fell into it when I didn’t like anything else I did.

What do you like about what you do?

The freedom mainly. It’s basically like being self employed, that’s probably the biggest thing. I kind of set my own hours, leave when I want to, come when I want to. Also I have a lot interaction with people on a daily basis. Continue Reading …

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