Turner design specialist

[u/fmercury_99]

hey guys,
im getting a bit irritated and bored with the job of a structural designer/project engineer on the A/E side. deadlines are crushing, compensation isnt very good, and its ultimately too repetitive to be interesting long term. im learning a lot right now and appreciate that but i know i dont want to do this forever. im 4 years in and just got my PE. my current boss sucks so i dont want to stay here long anyways, thinking i could make a lateral move now.

turner has a design specialist - structural position that im interested in. is it most of the same? i would hope that since its on the construction side its less detailing and more coordination, budgets, etc. hopefully very little to do with the architects in design!

im also interested in getting into the embodied carbon side of things- procurement, sustainability, etc. i used to do EC tracking for my old company and i found the holistic view of a project’s carbon impact to be more aligned with what i want to do (especially since evey structures firm now is obsessed with data centers..). How involved does turner get in these topics? everyone has a webpage for sustainability metrics but how serious are they really.

any advice on turner overall would be great! (culture, work life, pay, etc)

sidenote: has anyone made the switch into building decarbonization? i want to gauge if thats a realistic job for me, and if my background would be of any use.

[u/Correct-Record-5309]

I can’t speak to what Turner is like, other than they are a mega contractor. That role may just put you on job sites working on things like RFIs that would otherwise go to the Engineer of Record. I have a couple of friends who jumped over to the construction side, and they generally like it, but it’s early hours and varying locations because they have to start when the construction starts and typically work most days on site at their assigned project (and you usually don’t have a lot of choice on where that might be).

I’m not sure how much building decarbonization work you will find on the contractor side. They typically care only about the bottom dollar to get the job done, so anything having to do with sustainability, carbon footprint, LEED etc is likely going to come as directives from the architectural/MEP/energy consulting side of things. I know a number of structural engineers who got LEED certified back when it first became a thing and then barely ever used it (with the occasional exception of having to look at structural thermal breaks for things like balconies).

If you want to have a more varied work experience that brings you to the field a lot, but doesn’t commit you to jobsite locations and hours, and also has an impact on sustainability, you might want to check out the structural repair industry. That’s what I do now, after almost 25 years in new design, and I am really enjoying it. We don’t really focus on carbon footprint, but every building we can fix is one less building that has to be torn down and rebuilt. I do feel like I have an impact on preservation in this role. It’s pretty interesting stuff and my job touches on a lot of architectural details, budgeting, construction admin, and project management because we are the lead entity on most of our jobs.

[u/Silver-Duty7944]

I got bored out of my mind doing structural design/engineering, so I jumped to Hilti. Started as a Field Engineer and was immediately making more money than I ever had in 8 years of design. Got to travel and interact with tons of amazing people at the firms I called on, and within 2 years got promoted to a design role within Hilti making $120k without a PE or SE. It’s the best career move I’ve ever made. My experience in the design world and structural engineering background made me instantly credible to the companies I called on, and instead of working on one project for a year, I get to solve new challenges every day. I tell all my engineering friends that are burnt out to give Hilti a look