My Dream About Civil Technology

A bridge I used to walk over often (St Servaasbridge Maastricht)

 Since the start of my career I’ve been receiving all kind of stories about succesful people. Often they tell about how they had a dream, how they said when they were young: “That’s what I want to do”. I never had that. From a very young age on I had no idea what I wanted except for absorbing more and more (useless/useful) information. Since about 6 months I now know I want to be more creative in my job and create things. I am creating things, so that’s good, but the creativity as such is not impressive. I work according to rules of architecture and along guidelines.

Spring started and the sun is shining so I got an inject of extra energy that makes me want to do more than I am now. I am fairly busy already, but I know I can take on more. I have my regular work; several smaller projects creating new information/data flows, and one self started research to what my company offers in e-learning. Fairly interesting, but not outside my comfort zone, nor new. In these cases I’m working from experience and my expertise which I built up during the last 7 years. (My dear god! Has it really been that long?)

I had it this morning, as a matter of fact about two paragraphs and five minutes ago. I was reading about how the Netherlands was really good at civil technology and especially water management. That was not news, I’ve known that since I was a young child. I remember being taken to see the “Waterstormkering”; Holland’s biggest works to hold the water out. At the time I didn’t understand the greatness nor the size of the work, so it was not an everlasting impression. I was, however, always fascinated by how water always seemed to be able to get everywhere.

A pile of foundation

Anyway, this morning I was reading about civil technology for watermanagement and certain Dutch companies’ successes commercially in that area. I was reading about how they went about an assigment. First they send a Dutch expert to give advice for about two to four weeks. Then the local companies execute the work.

I don’t know what attracted me most, the many trips to foreign countries or the scale of the projects. During reading that article I thought: “I want to work in that area”.

Problem is, I know nothing about civil technology. Nor am I sure where I could fit in. Surely they need IT, but that doesn’t sound all that exciting. They need marketing to keep attracting the big assignments, maybe I could do something there. I’m not sure they’re looking. I will not be beaten just yet (probably within half a day) and I decided to take an earlier article as a sign. The earlier article was about how to write an application letter. What stood out to me was the including of an example of experience. Obviously, I have none in civil technology.

Not that I’ve never been anywhere close to any civil technology; I spend my days in buildings, I walk over bridges and I’m grateful for the waterworks that keep out the sea. No, I’ve been even closer. My second internship was at a technology factory, Flexion. I was responsible to collect all wishes and demands from customers for Flexion’s website. To do that I tagged along with some representers/salesmen to big companies, their customers. One of these customers was Caterpillar. Walking through the factory was cool and interesting, but it was what they had outside for display that made an everlasting impression on me: a pile for foundation. It was about two stories high and the height was so great, I couldn’t wrap my arms around it. That was really cool.

Should I do something with this gut feeling? If yes, what should I do? Giving up my day job doesn’t sound like the smartest thing. I would also need more training in marketing and I have to build my knowledge of civil technology. I’m not sure I’m up for it.

Source: Intermediair: Wereldwijd Nederlandse Dijken

Waterworks