Deb Boor

May 1992

Job Title: Electrical Department Head / Electrical Project Engineer
Employer: Affiliated Engineers, Inc.


Job Description:
As Department Head, I manage 33 people. Responsible for providing training, mentoring, establishing design guidelines, managing daily work loads, overseeing electrical designs and quality control.

As a project engineer, I am responsible for the electrical design of new and renovated facilities. Designs include lighting and controls, power distribution, fire alarm systems, telecommunications systems, security systems, other low voltage systems such as nurse call, paging, etc.


UWP Experience:
I really enjoyed UWP. Classroom sizes were smaller, and professors were available almost always to answer questions. I appreciated the labs, where you could apply what you learned in a practical, real world application, rather than just learn theory alone. Some classes offered real projects with local utilities as part of the curriculum.

Getting involved in other activities such as IEEE and Theta Tau (professional engineering fraternity) was also a lot of fun. It was a great way to build friendships with other engineering students.

My education at UWP prepared me well for the industry, and UWP has a great reputation for their engineering program!


TYPICAL WORK DAY:
A typical work day includes meetings with clients and architects, performing calculations, laying out electrical equipment on architectural backgrounds, talking with equipment vendors and manufacturers about electrical products, working with other internal team members to complete a design.

My day also includes meetings with other department heads to discuss work processes, staffing of projects and quality of our designs.


Sample Project Description:
My most favorite project was working on a new 560,000 square foot laboratory building for a client. The project involved a lot of people and was very challenging in many ways. One of the biggest challenges was that we had to relocate 2/3 of the entire campus electrical distribution system to make space for the building.