Exit Interview

(1) What is your essential question, and what are your answers?  What is your best answer and why?
My essential question is: What is the most important factor in ensuring profit in a grading operation?
Through my work at my mentorship as well as personal  research I came up with three answers.
1.Proper Estimation.
2.Proper Pre-construction Planning.
3. Proper management on all levels.
All of these fully answer my EQ and are each highly supported by in the field experiences. However my many discussions with my mentor and my second independent component all pointed toward one answer being the best. My first answer( proper estimation) is the best answer to my essential question for four reasons. First, It is the answer that best encompasses and affects construction profit, the main focus of my question. Second, estimation has the most direct relationship to profit (estimation sets up crucial contract prices).  Third, Estimation has the most impact on the construction process as a whole due to compounding factors. Finally it was the most heavily supported,coming up time and time again as the root cause of errors in the grading process.


2. What process did you go through to arrive at your best answer?


The process of finding by best answer was the focus of my second independent component. I looked through various old jobs that my mentorship completed and searched for a pattern or theme with the ones in which profit was not optimal. The most common factor turned out to be errors in estimation. Estimators had improperly predicted the construction cost by not calculating for  soil contamination, the possibility of high material price or simply failed to understand the complete scope of the project. I then had many discussions with my mentor about common factors and he agreed with me. estimation is so often a cause for error because an extremely minor error will compound throughout the project in a butterfly effect. My best answer was also eluded to through my research as improper estimation came up all the time.

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?
The first problem i encountered was a lack of sources. There are not many sources on grading and construction, most of the knowledge is learned on the job and the sources i did have from my mentorship were confidential. I was able to overcome this by searching harder for sources and relying more on discussions with my mentor. My second problem was defining proper estimation. Estimation can encompass a lot. talking with my mentor kept helped me define it and differentiate it from construction planning. (the focus of estimation is to calculate the completion price of a project for use in bidding.)

4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
My mentor was my most significant source in finding the answer to my eq, he is extremely well qualified and knowledgeable in the field of grading and estimation. Through sitting in on his meetings and my interviews I learned so much about the problems graders commonly face and how profit is generated throughout the project. My second most significant source was the Earth Tek company records of current and past projects. In these huge files i was able to look through old projects and find out what went wrong. I was able to see the effects of estimation compound through a project and i was able to see how commonly estimation came up as an error. These real life examples were an excellent primary source that showed my essential question in real life.