#707 job tour

I spent the morning at work in a unique way.

The company I work for is a partner in a joint venture that is building a brand new road that will become a freeway in the next 8 - 12 years. And when I say brand new, I mean they are building a road where previously a road did not exist. Much of the area where the road is being built is unoccupied space, home to hawks and snakes and antelopes.  Yes! Antelopes right here in the Salt Lake Valley! I saw about six of them today.

Part of me is sad that the space will someday be occupied. Part of me is really glad that the company I work for has a part in creating this road. The road has a cool name: Mountain View Corridor (MVC).  It's a 16-mile stretch of new frontage roads that will ease traffic on the west side of the valley. MVC starts out near Camp Williams at the south end and will eventually hook up with I-80 on the north end.

I spent the morning taking a tour of the project. Our whole business team was invited to go look at the job. There were nearly 30 of us who went on the tour. We rode in three separate vans that were driven by region engineers from the Utah Department of Transportation and each van had a project engineer from our company to tell us about what we were seeing. I think I was in the van with the best engineer/tour guide. Sheldon has been on the project since it began in 2009 and he is extremely knowledgeable and well-spoken. The other two guys both great, but I think Sheldon had the most knowledge.

It must be pretty cool to build something that will be around for a long, long time that you can point to and say, "I helped build that." MT gets to do that. This city and the whole area is covered with amazing buildings that he has been a part of putting together. He blows it off when I mention how incredible it is that he has worked on so many buildings. He says that it's the architect's building - he just reads the plans. Maybe that's true, but he can say he was part of making it happen. Until he works on it, it's just a plan. He makes it a reality. I admire him for being able to read the plans and put the parts together. I think people who can see the vision and make it happen are outstanding.

I do not have the vision. You can describe how you think something should look, and I do not have the ability to visualize it at all.

For example, when the engineer was describing how a particular section of the road was going to look and what was going to happen in a particular area, I could not follow along and "see" what he was saying. I trust that he knows what he's doing. I think he does. He's a smart fellow!

I enjoyed the morning and seeing the project. I'd never been on a tour of it before. The whole road is scheduled to open at the end of the year. There is actually a two mile section of the road that is scheduled to open on Saturday - that's way early and that's good for everyone. You might think that two miles is not much, but it's right in front of a new school, so it will ease traffic in and out of the school and eliminate a busy road through a neighborhood. The neighborhood will be getting a big new park out of the deal.

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day office drudgery and politics and petty problems and software issues. It was great to go out and see what our company actually does.