Field Trip Friday

Since I went to school in Africa and was home schooled through 7th grade, we didn’t go on field trips very often. I actually think that I went on about 3-4 in my entire time in school. My work has helped to make up for that a bit though. We get to go on “site visits” to see the buildings that we have designed while they are being built. Today I went on another site visit to the “United Health Group” building that is going up in Minnetonka. UHG is actually the company that was interested in interviewing Jen. It’s a small world.

The building that we checked out today was mid-construction. You could walk on all of the floors, but the glass was not in all of the walls. Some areas were pretty well finished off, and other areas won’t be done for months still. We checked out the bathrooms and watched a guy putting tile in. We got to walk on the roof of the building (it 10 stories, so the view was fun). They had huge industrial heaters that looked like airplane turbines. You could see huge blue flames roaring inside them. They were quite toasty. On the way to the roof, we got to ride in the construction lift. It was mostly like an elevator, but had plywood on the sides. There was an old man sitting inside that apparently does nothing other than operate the lift.

Safety is very important to Opus, so we had to wear hard hats and safety glasses (normal prescription glasses do count) and hard soled shoes the entire time. I feel very official and important when we go on the site all dressed up like that.

The entire trip took about an hour and a half. It was a very good way to spend my afternoon, since I got back and felt like I barely sat down to work before it was time to go. This is the 3rd or 4th site visit that we have made since I started at Opus. I’m finally making up for all of the field trips that I missed out on in school :)