Question

Please discuss below how this internship has impacted your industry knowledge and career search for a construction company? Possible topics:

• What do you now know about the industry you interned in that you did not know before?
• What did you learn from other professionals in the field that surprised you?
• How has completing an internship confirmed or changed your career path?
• What have you learned about your personal work style and what types of projects energize you, that will impact where/how you look for your next opportunity?
• What skills do you need to refine or develop to be competitive in this career?
• How has this experience allowed you to recognize the value you can bring to an organization?

Answer 1

Last summer, I got the opportunity to work as an intern in the operations department of a well-known construction company. I was working in procurement department where the raw material for the construction is procured from suppliers. I was astonished to see how critically the company considered quality in all its processes. The strategic sourcing policy of the company was all about maintaining the quality standards of the company. The sourcing facilitates eco-friendly and organic procurement process.

Some of the evaluation methods, usually checklists and check sheets, which were used by the company to evaluate the supplier site are:

• Carter’s 10 Cs of Supplier Evaluation: This is basically a checklist which is used for site evaluation. The offerings of the supplier is evaluated on the following 10 factors:
  • Capacity
  • Control
  • Cost
  • Culture
  • Communication
  • Competency
  • Commitment
  • Cash
  • Consistency
  • Clean
• Categorical method of supplier site evaluation: Under this method, the key features, preferred for the site are plotted in columns and the suppliers are plotted in rows. The features provided by respective suppliers are marked in the matrix, thereby giving a snapshot of the comparative performance of the suppliers.

I also learnt the importance of ERP in SCM from professionals of the company. The employees of the operations department in the construction company were trained to use ERP. ERP is enterprise resource planning. It is basically the management of core business processes of a company. ERP works with the objective of enhancing and streamlining the internal business operations of a company.

1. ERP helps in managing the network traffic of the organization effectively
2. ERP facilitates the overall company’s data organization, collection, processing and retrieval as it uses a structured format.
3. Access management controls are used to manage the data retrieval operations.

This strategy has facilitated the overall operational efficiency and consumer responsiveness at the company. The company has been able to exert its competitive advantage on its competitors, because of the same.

The internship was quite a learning process. I got an insight of the construction industry. Moreover, the hands on experience of procuring the raw materials for the company, interaction with suppliers and the way quality checks are done, helped in clearing my concepts. I also developed good networking skills during this internship as I had to deal with various suppliers and intermediaries. Overall it was a very fruitful experience.

The competencies, in my views, which will help any professional to make a mark in the construction industry are:

• Creative Thinking
• Problem Solving
• Negotiation Skills
• Communication Skills
• Time Management