All in a Day's Work

A lot of people ask me what I do for a living, and sometimes it's difficult to explain. The short of it is that I work for a consulting firm which primarily consists of engineers, but I am not an engineer. I am a planner, which can mean many different things. Most of the time, for me it means that I study the social and environmental impacts of transportation projects, and I help clients (mostly public agencies) navigate through the state and federal environmental processes. While that is the base of what I do, my day-to-day duties can vary widely. This is partly the nature of planning, partly the nature of consulting firms, and partly the nature of ME, in that I like to dabble in lots of things. Today was no exception, and as I look back on the day I realize it's a nice snapshot of the potential things I can do in a day. It was a bit of an atypical day because I had an evening meeting, which doesn't happen often. But here's an overview of what I might do in a day, as represented by today's events:

- meeting with northern suburb city administrator regarding potential commuter rail station in that community
- meeting to discuss operation and maintenance facility options for a light rail transit line between Minneapolis and St. Paul, and potential impacts to historic and recreational resources
- conference call to discuss interchange design concepts for a highway project, and planning for next public open house
- Update resume for proposal due 9/15
-Work with supervisee to plan a field visit to several potential commuter rail station sites for a feasibility study we are doing
- Answer calls from property owners in small town west of Minneapolis, regarding revised shoreland ordinance I authored
- Planning Commission meeting to present said ordinance in front of about 50 residents (got tables so I'll be back again in a month)

Tomorrow I will:
- tour a 30-mile proposed commuter rail corridor and field visit (take photos and document natural resources) 7 potential station sites.
- attend committee meeting of one community in the corridor to give overview of project
- return to office and finalize environmental document for highway project that affects a U.S. Fish and Wildlife easement
- finish invoicing for 3 projects I am managing - one day late because I was too busy to do it today!

That's me in a nutshell. Any given day, I could be doing something different...but this is a good representation. Highway and transit projects, feasibility studies and environmental documents, with a little project management thrown in. Such is my daily grind!