Big Time Changes!
A lot has changed for me both personally and professionally in the last month. A rundown of the main events:
- At the beginning of December I got engaged to my girlfriend of four years (who lives in Atlanta, GA);
- Received my semi-annual review; and
- At the end of December I officially said my goodbyes to the Covington, KY office and headed south down I-75 to start work at Trinity's Atlanta, GA office.
Before leaving Kentucky, I had my third semi-annual review since joining Trinity. As a G56, you will receive a review from your immediate supervisor in June and December of each year. Every six months you will receive a set of goals that you are asked to accomplish. These goals can range from a target utilization (percentage of billable hours) to educational advancement (taking a modeling course). The review process represents an excellent way to assess what your current strengths and weaknesses are as a consultant and also represents the primary avenue by which merit increases are evaluated. As part of the semi-annual review process you will also be given the opportunity to do a self-review. These self-reviews are also reviewed by your immediate supervisor and can be a great way to remind them of what you have accomplished in the past six months or are hoping to accomplish in the future.
Just prior to Christmas was my last physical day in the Kentucky office. I will always be extremely grateful for the great opportunity that office gave me by getting me started in my career with Trinity. The people in the Kentucky office are consummate professionals who I greatly enjoyed working with and I wish them nothing but continued success in the future. I am extremely thankful that both the Kentucky office and Atlanta office were willing to work with me to pursue the opportunity to transfer offices within the company.
I officially started in Atlanta on January 3rd, although throughout December my workload was split between Kentucky and Atlanta work, and I have to admit that I was slightly nervous walking into the office for the first time. It felt like being a new-hire all over again with that fact that I hadn't met anyone from the office in person. The big difference this time around was that I was armed with a year and a half of great experience under my belt and was much more confident that I'd be able to walk in and hit the ground running (unlike my first few weeks in Covington!). My nerves were quickly alleviated as everyone in the office was extremely welcoming and excited to have me on board.
I will be able to transfer a lot of the skills (particularly Air Dispersion Modeling) that I learned in Kentucky down to Georgia. I've been able to hit the ground running on a few different modeling projects already. In the Kentucky office, we dealt nearly exclusively with Kentucky area clients (and occasionally Ohio and Indiana) so the main challenge was learning the state-specific air regulations for Kentucky. In the Atlanta office, I will potentially be dealing with clients from Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee. After spending a year and a half to get a truly solid grasp on the Kentucky regulations, I know I will have a lot of work to do to come up to speed on the state-specific regulations for all four of the new states I will potentially be dealing with. It will be a definite challenge, but one that I'm very much looking forward to!
Even though all Trinity offices follow the same standards and procedures, as represented by our ISO 9001 certification (quality control), I've noticed over the past week that there can be many differences between individual offices. In the future I'll share a little more on this subject and try to give even better insight on what it is like to move from one office to another in the company. Thanks for reading!