Engineer’s office continues its focus on trainings for staff members

Additional training was received by the engineer’s office to ultimately save money in the long run. Training primarily revolved around AutoCAD, a computer-aided design software developed by Autodesk. The software is widely utilized for 2D and 3D drawings and models in engineering and public works fields.

Jasper County Engineer’s Office staff were authorized by supervisors to receive custom civil 3D training and mentoring from Rand Worldwide Subsidiary, doing business as IMAGINiT Technologies. County Engineer Michael Frietsch provided the proposal to supervisors on April 8. The two-day training costs $4,680.

“A day-and-a-half is more of a standard sort of going over things and then a half-day of going over specifics,” he said. “What’s going on is as machine control becomes more and more in use by these contractors, the need to make sure our files that we provide them are cleaned up to their level … is getting higher.”

Trainings could help engineer’s office leadership understand what needs to be done on the front end of various projects. In the end, Frietsch said staff will be able to provide a product to a contractor and not have to pay more money to an outside consultant or survey company to clean it up.

“That’s kind of the goal is to help us understand what we need to do to be able to get a clean file out the door and ready to use by the contractor,” Frietsch said.

Supervisor Brandon Talsma asked Frietsch if he felt the training was worth the investment. Frietsch said yes, and he noted the training is not something his office would pay for or solicit for every year. The engineer’s office has not done any formal training in the three-and-a-half years he has been here.

He said, “This will be a worthwhile thing for each of the guys and myself to kind of go through so that we know what we’re looking at and know what we’re doing.”

The secondary roads department has now received at least two different types of training in the past few months. In February, the board of supervisors hired a company to carry out multi-day, hands-on motor grader training. Altogether, that training cost less than $20,000 for secondary roads staff.