Project Engineer III, Sustainability

The Work

LACCD is spending bond money to cut energy use and carbon across its nine college campuses: solar, battery storage, microgrids, electric vehicle charging, new building controls, LED lighting, upgraded central plants, and swapping gas equipment for electric. The Sustainability Strike Team runs those projects. You are the senior engineer who helps take each one from an idea to a finished system that works.

You work under the Sustainability Strike Team Lead and support the project managers through every phase: shaping a new project, design, buying the work, building it, testing that it performs, and closing it out. Early on, you help check the site and the utility service, size up what a project will take, and put together its scope, budget, and schedule. During construction, you review submittals, contractor questions, and change orders, check the work in the field, and keep the records straight.

This is a good seat for a project engineer or assistant project manager with 7 or more years on larger building projects who wants to work for the owner on energy work. A background in solar, building controls, or mechanical and electrical systems helps, but it is not required.

What You Will Do

• Give technical, engineering, and coordination support to the project managers and the Sustainability Strike Team from design through closeout
• Help shape new sustainability projects across the district: what the campus needs, the site conditions, the technical requirements, and what could get in the way
• Coordinate site visits, checks of building and utility capacity, and feasibility studies, and work with the utility companies on service and upgrades
• Help project managers, technical experts, engineers, and estimators build and check scopes, early budgets, and schedules that fit the funding and the bond rules
• Prepare the paperwork that sets up a new project (why it is needed, scope, budget, reviews, and approvals) following the program office's standard procedures
• Review and coordinate design documents, submittals, requests for information, change order proposals, and field orders
• Work with District staff, college project teams, architects, engineers, contractors, and outside experts to sort out technical problems and get answers back on time
• Check the work in the field against the plans, the specifications, the College's standards, and DSA requirements (DSA is the state office that approves public school and college construction)
• Track schedules, change order proposals, approved changes, and submittals, and check that the contractor keeps record drawings current
• Run project meetings, write the minutes, track action items, and keep everyone current on status and open issues
• Help review monthly invoices and the documents behind them
• Support commissioning (testing that systems work as designed), closeout, and record documents, and keep current plans, specifications, and project records in the right hands

Requirements

What You Bring

• 7 years in a similar position doing project or construction management on commercial, public, or educational buildings, on projects worth more than $15M (required for this role)
• A bachelor's degree in engineering, architecture, business, construction management, or a related field (required for this role)
• Comfort working with campus staff, designers, contractors, and utility companies at the same time
• Preferred
• Bluebeam Revu for reviewing and marking up documents
• Building Information Modeling (BIM), the 3D models used to design and coordinate buildings
• A large project management software system for tracking, documents, and reporting
• The DSA design, approval, and construction process
• Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, including building management systems, building automation, and controls
• Any energy or sustainability work: solar, battery storage, LED lighting, central plants, electric vehicle charging, or commissioning