Project Manager-Civil Engineer
Pros
Substation, Telecom, or Transmission Line projects are the 3 groups to work in. The work is challenging but very interesting.
Cons
There is a severe lack in resources in the environmental and realty organizations that grind your projects to a halt for 9-18 months, then once you have someone assigned to your team, they take nearly a year to do their job. "120 Days" actually means 300 days. BPA hires their coffee buddies not the PM doing the lions share of the work. If you want to be promoted just treat the supervisor to Starbucks, often. The PM's have zero control on the output from their team members but get blamed for delays. The PM supervisors do not step in to help when delays occur in Contacting or Environmental or Realty. BPA implemented a workflow to set milestones for project lifecycle but it only added more time to get a project done instead of highlighting the area the project is being stalled... A ton of money spent on change management to make the job harder not smarter. Contractors are abused verbally and supervisors look the other way.
