PMA continues its tradition of providing meaningful internship opportunities to emerging professionals in engineering and construction management. This summer, our interns worked both remotely and in person on projects nationwide and gained skills for use inside the workplace and beyond.
Together, they contributed to the success of PMA, and independently they concluded:
- If you are not sure about something, don’t be afraid to ask questions until you understand what is going on.
- The internship is a great position to get hands-on experience in the business/project management world.
- When working alongside the skilled professionals at PMA, no challenge is too big.
Our 2022 summer interns included:
Dillon Ritch
Dillon is a junior at Michigan State University, and his hometown is Livonia, MI. He is looking forward to continuing his education in business communications and advertising. Dillon spends his time with family and friends outside of work and school and enjoys playing basketball and golf. A new learning area for Dillon was setting up Google Ads for the NetRisk software. Dillon appreciated the flexibility of remote and office work: “being able to work both from home and in the office made it easy for me to schedule my second job and work with the marketing team who are in different locations.”
Dillon worked with both the marketing and accounting teams on several projects. For marketing, Dillon worked on a campaign to provide schedule template files for PMA’s proprietary scheduling software NetPoint. He developed marketing resources and supported the social media campaign with content and postings. He also helped create new Google Ads for PMA’s risk management software. “Working on these projects gave me a full view of the marketing and sales process. I enjoyed learning how to use the different software applications like Google Ads and SEMrush to view the success of the campaign analytics.”
Summing up his internship at PMA: “I learned a lot about the two very different areas of the business with marketing and accounting and got some valuable experience with marketing and advertising! I hope to continue my efforts in this field and progress to a higher level in my skills in marketing and advertising.”
Gianna DiGravio
Gianna joins the PMA marketing and administration team from Hanover, MA. She is a rising senior at UMass Amherst studying marketing and real estate. Outside of school, she loves playing basketball (and the Celtics!), going to the beach, spending time with family, and traveling, with her favorite vacation spot being Treasure Island, FL. Interestingly enough, PMA was a part of the renovation of her own high school, Hanover High, so Gianna said she enjoyed observing the whole process of preparing proposals for other high schools.
Gianna has been helping with the regional company newsletter since the first week of her internship. Gathering information on projects, people, birthdays, and anniversaries to share throughout the Braintree/Boston division, Gianna thought this was an excellent way for employees to stay connected. Before coming to PMA, she was unfamiliar with proposals and how they were created. She quickly learned about SOIs and RFQs and how a proposal evolves from them. She even had the chance to help with a few proposals by making edits, finding accurate data, adding pictures, and producing the final print.
Gianna says she learned a lot about communication and how the success of a business depends on it. Everyone has their own parts of a project to work on, but it doesn’t come to life until everyone comes together. Working for PMA, where communication is essential, has made her see how everything is connected and the importance of being responsible for your own tasks to reach everyone’s goals.
Joshua Kelly
Joshua has worked on several interesting projects since starting with PMA. He began at the Wareham Elementary School in January 2021 and transitioned into work at Shrewsbury Major Howard W. Beal Elementary School when one of the PMA team members had to leave the site. In April of 2021, he was moved to Somerville High School to assist with punch list items. Then, as work wrapped up at Somerville, he was moved to the Boston Arts Academy around September of 2021 and has been working on that project ever since! Being on the construction site, he noticed very quickly that each day has its own unique challenges to overcome, but when working alongside the skilled professionals at PMA, no challenge is too big. Joshua says, “I have come to realize that PMA is one giant family where everyone cares for each other and strives to help each other in any way possible.”
Jackson Sordillo
Jackson is from Hull, MA, and is a rising senior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is pursuing a BS in civil and environmental engineering with a projected graduation date in the spring of 2023. Jackson enjoys football, baseball, and fishing.
Jackson has been working on the new West Elementary and Shawsheen Preschool project in Andover, the LVTI MSBA Accelerated Repair Program in Lynn, and the Revere Beachmont MSBA Accelerated Repair Program. At Revere, he walked the site with other members of PMA, and attended a project meeting. On one memorable occasion, he was also asked to fill in for the onsite project manager. For the Lynn and Andover projects, Jackson helped with the prequalifying of subcontractors to bid on the projects. He is currently helping to prepare to accept bids.
Jackson was also able to go out to the Andover site a couple of times to observe how they were preparing for the construction of the new school. He thought it interesting to see projects at differing stages and compare smaller projects with large ones. Jackson said he learned about what goes on behind the scenes of construction projects and the process of prequalifying contractors to bid on a project. He noted that PMA cares about its employees and wants them to succeed.
Ian Sheridan
Ian has been helping in the prequalification process for the West Elementary School project in Andover, MA, and the Lynn LVTI – MSBA Accelerated Repair Program project. He contributed to the team by helping review and grade prequalification packages and making reference calls for the packages. This helped make sure that the prequalification packages were reviewed on time to present to the towns. At PMA, Ian has also been a part of the Ballardvale Fire Station project in Andover, MA, the Veterans Memorial Elementary School project, and the Marshfield Police Station and DPW project.
During his internship, he learned that communication is a key part of how a team operates. For his senior capstone project this semester at Wentworth, he used communication skills that he developed working at PMA to ensure his group completed everything on time. Throughout the week, they were in constant communication, over Zoom or in person, about what needed to be done and who was doing what, allowing everyone to be on the same page.
“Everyone at PMA is willing to work together and help each other out, and it provides a very positive experience to grow and learn about the industry. For interns, it is a great place because of the wide experience you will receive,” said Ian. In his internship at PMA, he was able to work on many different projects in different stages ranging from prequalification to closeout, which allowed him to understand better the work needed for each phase of a project and how each project has its own challenges and learning experiences.