Name:

Ray Hashimee, PE, CCM

Title:

Principal at EPC Consultants, Inc

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I am a principal at EPC Consultants, and primarily we do project management & construction management in the tunneling industry. So half of one of my career has been working for a general contractor, and then the other half has been on the CM side.

I don't know how I decided to become a civil engineer. You know, the industry is awesome! The people are great. We're doing fantastic stuff in here in the States. Building a tunnel, for transit and, making the environment and quality of life better. So it's just a fantastic job, an awesome industry to be in.

I've been a member of the UCA, I would say, for the last 12 years or so. Ever since I was able to get to these conferences and, was able to have a company sponsor me to come. You know, 12 years has been great. I've attended multiple sessions as far as the papers are concerned. It is great just networking and meeting new folks and talking about different projects and some of the things that are coming up in the in the in our industry.

I work for a small company. We try to bring young my younger engineers here to some of these events. But some of the bigger companies, we need for them to bring these younger engineers, younger folks to get them exposed, get them really excited.

As I recall, I used to work for a company, a big contractor that I'm not going to name names, you know. Every year I would ask my boss, hey, can I go to one of these conferences? And I was told, “Oh, we don't have the budget this year… We don't have the budget this year.” So I learned that the hard way. If we could get some of these younger folks, younger engineers, get them exposed, it'd be great for the industry.

My main focus, as a professional here in the industry is try to motivate younger folks. For the longest time here at these conferences, we don't bring enough young folks. And so it's a challenge and it's a problem, because you see the same people over and over again, but we need to bring new folks.

I'll give you an example. A colleague of mine, his son was about 16 years old and I brought him to one of the tunnels for Northeast Boundary, DC water. And ever since, every time I see his father here at these conferences, he's like, “he's always talking about it”.

So maybe one at a time. We change minds and hearts and try to get younger folks into the industry. Just break it down on individual basis. And if you know, say somebody saw somebody's daughter interested in engineering, whatever engineering, just bring them to the industry, bring them into a tunnel, show them what a tunnel boring machine is and get them going.

And yeah, I think we'll make it one at a time, and then obviously you're doing it in a bigger picture of some of these Down for That say, for the Moles Student Day, or some of these other programs, even going to local colleges and bringing some of those folks in in shown them the projects.

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