The past three weeks have gone so quickly, it’s hard to believe that I have been a GIS intern for three weeks already. This week started off pretty slow with most of my time spent scanning… one bonus of all this scanning is that I haven’t felt so guilty if I don’t go for a run after work as the scanner is upstairs and I have to press scan on my computer downstairs.
Although the scanning was what I did for a bulk of the week I also got to be involved in a few different projects. Like I said in my last post, I had been asked to help prepare a proposal in response to an RFP. Once I had finished making a template and including some basic company information there has not been too much more for me to do on it, at least not until the others involved in the project have finished adding the more technical information- I have a meeting later today where I guess I will find out what the next stage in replying to this RFP will be.
The main project I was working on for the remainder of the week and will be spending a lot of my time on between now and Christmas is updating a client’s spatial viewer. They currently have a dated ArcIMS viewer so I am working on making them a new viewer. So far I am finding this task quite challenging and I have already learnt a lot. A majority of what has been involved in this project so far has been things I have been briefly shown in my studies; however it is more difficult actually applying the theory and having to do it for myself… thankfully everyone at EGL is more than willing to give me a hand when I get stuck.
An observation I have made this week is just how many opportunities EGL offers their staff. For example, often staff are away on training courses and are encouraged to up skill and gain new qualifications. There also appears to be a lot of opportunities to work outside of the region and country, for example a couple of staff members are off to New Caledonia to work on a project for the week.
All in all this has been yet another week where I have been given different challenges and have had the opportunity to learn more about what is involved in working in the GIS industry.