This past summer, I was fortunate enough to be able to have a summer internship with Northrop Grumman, an Aerospace/Defense company with locations nationwide. Unlike many others who had their work primarily online, the nature of my position as part of the facilities engineering team required me to be on campus in in Redondo Beach most days. During my time there, I worked on several different projects including changing the signage on the top of the building which used to be the old company headquarters, changing an old beer warehouse into new cleanroom lab spaces, and enhancing pedestrian safety on site.
For the signage project, we had to take down the old letters, repair the top of the parapets from years of weather damage, paint and install the new company logo in 12 weeks. Being such a big project, I was tasked with making sure the schedule was on time and ensuring the safety of all workers on site through constant safety inspections and attending all meetings with the contractors. Safety is of the utmost priority on any site because usually people have done similar jobs hundreds of times and think they can cut corners on certain safety measures.
I am very happy with all of the friends that I made at Northrop Grumman and am glad that I was still able to have an internship this past summer. Though it was hard with social distancing measures in place, I was still able to meet a lot of fellow interns and make many connections for later on in my career. It was also nice to be able to apply some of the skills that I learned in my classes to the real world!
It was a great opportunity that I was able to take advantage of from going to the Viterbi Career Fair. Learn more about how I got this position in my previous blog post here. This year’s career fair will be taking place virtually and I am very excited to see what is in store!
