Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Local Government Staffing topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Kenmore civil engineer who started as an intern discusses work, ADA project and advice to students
Summary
Lucas Fowler, who began as a University of Washington intern, accepted a full-time civil-engineer position with the City of Kenmore. He described learning traffic engineering on the job, the challenges and rewards of small-city work, and his role on a local ADA accessibility project.
Lucas Fowler, a civil engineer for the City of Kenmore, described how a college internship led to a full-time municipal engineering job and said he is currently working on a local Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility project.
Fowler told host Amber Clifton on the City of Kenmore podcast that he found the internship through his college email while a student at the University of Washington and worked part time during school to see what area of civil engineering he wanted to pursue. "I learned a lot of traffic engineering," Fowler said, explaining that much of his on-the-job learning involved communicating with team members, the public and the city council.
The transition from intern to full-time staff came in the months before he graduated. Fowler said the permanent position opened three to four months before his degree was completed and that he "was honestly pretty ecstatic" to accept it because of the coworkers and the pace of work. He described the move to full time as an increase in autonomy that also brought more responsibility: "There definitely is a little bit of anxiety," he said, noting he has already made "one or two, you know, not terribly bad mistakes," but that learning on the job is part of the process.
Fowler and Clifton discussed how staffing at a smaller city shapes the job. He said working for a small or medium-sized municipality means employees often perform a wide range of tasks rather than specializing narrowly, which he called useful early in a career. "You get to do a lot of little things and go into a bunch of different areas," Fowler said, adding that the experience builds a broad set of skills.
Fowler identified an ADA accessibility project in Kenmore as one of his current assignments and said he finds it rewarding to see a project grow from concept to construction. Clifton said the podcast will run a follow-up episode on the ADA project once it is complete.
For students considering public-sector engineering, Fowler advised trying a variety of internships and extracurriculars but cautioned against overloading a schedule. He described his own internship workload during the school year as about "10 to 15, maybe 16 hours a week," and encouraged students to seek balance. He also said he mentors the city's current intern, Zeke, who recently received a job offer.
"I'm doing my best. Just be patient with me," Fowler said toward the episode's close, a request he framed as part of learning and growing in a municipal engineering role. Clifton thanked him and said the city is glad he returned as a permanent employee.
The episode presents Fowler's personal account of training, hiring and early responsibilities; it does not record formal city decisions, votes or contract awards related to the projects discussed.
