Fall 2024 Work Term Report

Talha Malik - Student Project Coordinator

Chandos Construction

Chandos Construction is a Canadian General Contracting company, constantly tackling large new projects nationwide.

I was hired in order to help the Project Management team streamline the operations of a project in its final stages.

The founders named the company after Chandos Lake, - a body of water belonging to Ontario's Kawartha Highlands - a place that had a history in both of their upbringings.

Technologies Used

The company has large branches all over Canada, with regional head offices in Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto, Chalk River, Red Deer, Calgary, and Ottawa.

I was employed by the Toronto division, stationed in the Aurora site office, and spent nearly the entire co-op term working on this project.

Although the position I held was not typically taken by Computer Science students, I introduced some of my unique skills and managed to tailor the job to my areas of expertise due to my strong initiative.

Job Description

I continued to work on the Aurora Library Square project that I was assigned to for the Summer 2024 work term, however in addition I was now also working on the Toronto Centennial Library and Barrie Operation Centre projects.

The parts of this project that were relevant to me included coordinating outstanding tasks between trades, tracking deficiencies in the construction, and wholly managing the status of our online systems for multiple projects at once. For these tasks I used Viewpoint's Team and Field View software, Microsoft Excel, and Adobe Construction Cloud (ACC). Similarly to the previous work term, the majority of my academic development in this role has come from my own initiative and desire to enhance the work with my own skills and areas of expertise.

As noted in the WTR for Summer 2024, the majority of the programming I did on the job was unprompted and on my own accord. Many of the day-to-day tedious tasks our team needs to complete have now been automated by me using my existing knowledge of programming languages. In this job the language I used most frequently was Python, alongside useful libraries such as Pandas, NumPy, matplotlib, pynput, PyTorch, and GitHub for version control. Due to my impressive work in the previous work term, my superiors started giving me different types of assignments, including asking me to enhance an existing macro in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet used for forecasting.

Image of site

Aurora Library Square

Image of site

Centennial Library

Shown on the right is an example of the output from a script I made to search for documents from within a large local database. The built-in Windows search tool was both slow and inaccurate for the purposes of my superiors, and this resulted in a near instantaneous and simple to use solution.

Additionally, one of my superiors eventually tasked me with some enhancements to an existing macro in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet used for forecasting. This task required me to familiarize myself with VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) programming, which was a new experience for me. I added multiple new features to the workflow based on a list of deliverables from my boss, and eliminated a significant amount of manual work from his process.

(I verified with my superiors that these images were permissible to use and that no confidential information was present. I am not able to share details about the inner workings of the code.)

Visible to the left are some samples of the process behind this tool's development.

As displayed by the images, I leveraged my expertise in software efficiency to refine the script until it's runtime was under 10 seconds consistently. I used methods such as switching APIs, minimizing the number of Excel accesses the code had to make, and rewriting complex series of operations into more simple functions.

This script was then exported as a .exe file that could conveniently be run by my superiors without any technical knowledge. This made previously a series of tedious tasks increase in speed by a factor of >100x. The solution was universally appreciated and taught me some important skills in addition to solving a time-consuming problem.

Learning Goals

CRITICAL & CREATIVE THINKING - Depth & Breadth of Understanding

Goal

One of my goals is to improve my depth and breadth of understanding regarding technical skills. This is something I already made progress towards achieving in the previous term, however there is plenty of room to grow.

Action Plan

I plan to achieve this goal by continuing to leverage the creative freedom I am given to learn new technologies and use them effectively in my work. I also plan to make the most of any new processes or platforms that are introduced into our company's workflow during this work term.

Measure of Success

I will measure the success of this goal from the feedback of my superiors and some of my own personal analysis.

Reflection

I feel that I have achieved this goal with great success. I have often created my own software solutions to given problems, leveraging my expertise to save company time and reducing required manpower. I expanded upon my technical abilities and cemented my position as offering more that what my job description entailed.

PROFESSIONAL & ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR - Teamwork

Goal

One of my learning goals is to improve my teamwork abilities and general cooperative prowess.

Action Plan

I plan to achieve this goal by taking any opportunities to improve the efficiency of efficacy of a task through collaboration. I already consider this to be one of my strengths however I am sure that I can find many opportunities to improve my skills and achieve this goal.

Measure of Success

I plan to measure the success of this goal through a combination of the comments from my supervisors and some introspective analysis.

Reflection

I feel that I have achieved this goal with moderate success. My cooperative skills and professional communication are generally strong, however the nature of my position meant that I spent significantly more time on independent work than in a team.

COMMUNICATING - Written Communication

Goal

One of my goals is to improve my written communication as much as I can during this job.

Action Plan

I plan to achieve this goal mostly through my normal day-to-day work, a significant portion of which involves correspondence with other project members both inside and outside of our company. I will be improving my skills regardless, but setting it as a goal will make it a more significant objective of mine on a regular basis.

Measure of Success

I plan to measure the success of this goal through primarily my own analysis and a comparison to samples of my communication from the previous work term, however feedback from my supervisors would also add valuable insight.

Reflection

I feel that I have achieved this goal with great success. One of the primary functions of my position was still communicating with other companies about the status of our projects, and I had an abundance of existing and new experience.

Overall Reflection

In my previous Summer 2024 Work Term Report, I stated that I tried my best to maximise my career development in a non-ideal job. My outlook has changed somewhat since, with a new appreciation for the jon-specific skills I gained in this job, whilst also being able to push the limits of the job and cater towards my pre-existing strengths in software development. Although in the previous term my only meaningful experience came about from my own initiative, due to the more varied and technical tasks I was given in this work term I was satisfied with my skill development in a different way than in the past. Like the previous term, I gained connections with my superiors and left a very positive impression on them, resulting in a grade of Outstanding on my final performance evaluation and serving as another incentive for future employers when considering me. Although I do not plan to continue in construction after this year, I appreciate the value of having connections who would provide a very positive reference for future opportunities elsewhere. In preparation for the coming Summer 2025 Co-op term, I will continue to hone my skills and the depth and breadth of my skillset, opening myself up to more opportunities.

Conclusion/Acknowledgements

Thanks SOCS Co-op staff for observing my work term report. I hope it helped you to get an idea of what I gained from this term, what I provided to the company, and the lessons I will take with me going forward.

I would like to thank the SOCS Co-op coordinators Laura Gatto, Kate McRoberts, and Anne-Marie Zawadzki for any support provided during this work term.

In addition, I would like to thank my supervisors who gave me the freedom to develop my skills the way I wanted to, those being Houman Pezeshki (Senior Project Manager), Emmanuel Velesrubio (Assistant Project Manager) and Brendan Farquhar (Senior Project Manager).

GitHub Profile

Talha Malik 2024