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Marshall Elizer., PE, PTOE - Executive V.P. of Gresham, Smith, and Partners
My father was in highway construction;
worked for a construction company for 36 years and built a lot
of the interstate system in Tennessee.
And I used to visit those projects and I guess I got interested in
transportation that way. Plus, I love to drive.
Engineering can be lots of different things and you can
have lots of different characteristics and needs
and you can fit it most anywhere in the engineering discipline.
If you want to a computer person, if you want to be highly technical and not
interact with people, you can find a place to do that in engineering. If you really
want to sell things and promote things and try to convince people,
in almost a marketing role, you can do that in transportation.
Or you can manage projects, you can be business-
focused and an administrator or a manager. So there are lots of different
paths within any engineering; particularly in
transportation engineering, which is where I'm focused.
There's a trade off in engineering everyday and every project between how you
designed it, how safe it is, what it cost and what the
users think. You are always balancing, trying to understand a balance of
those perspectives and the final solution.
Now that there is more thinking and focus on "green", it's sustainable.
We are understand about the resources we use, how we
construct things, water quality, keep the dust down, noise down
and then again back to building facilities that don't force
you into an automobile to get somewhere.
If you need to make a shopping trip, you can walk or bike
just as easy.
It's a much more active management and use of technology today;
and that's where the system continues to go. One day there will be
autonomous vehicles that drive themselves. If you're really
in to the tech side of engineering and
just communications, there's a place for you in
engineering; and in transportation in particular.