Engineers Week 2023 Interview: Jacob Webb, Engineering Technician
Today, in addition to Engineers Week, a week dedicated to celebrating the future of engineering, we celebrate Girl Day, an opportunity to show girls how engineers change our world. The week, and this day, was created by the National Society for Professional Engineers (NSPE) an organization that is dedicated to “Creating a world where the public can be confident that engineering decisions affecting their lives are made by qualified and ethically accountable professionals.” The theme this year for Engineers Week is Creating the Future. With this theme in mind, we interviewed six of our employees who are newer to the field of engineering and are paving the way in the engineering field each day. Read our interviews each day to find out what excites them about their current work and the future.
Engineers Week 2023: Today, meet Jacob Webb, Engineering Technician in our Asheville office
Why did you pursue the engineering field?
From a young age I always wanted to build things and work with my hands. I started with asking my parents for a set of Lincoln Logs, which I quickly mastered. I then gathered a large collection of Legos from standard blocks to full sets, building everything my mind could think of. In high school, I became fascinated by computers and how they operate, so I began building those from parts to full PC’s, which allowed me to understand electronics and how things interconnect and work together as one. Lastly, into college, I gained an obsession of cars, motorsports, and anything that has a motor in it. Learning the intricacies of motors and cars allowed me to see how a wide variety of disciplines and technologies come together to create a full machine. All of these passions and experiences from my years growing up pushed me towards pursuing engineering as a career.
What excites you about problem solving?
Problem solving is what allows us to continue moving forward as a society. A lot of the technology of today wasn’t even thought about 100 years ago, and the only reason we have all this technology now is due to problem solving and critical thinking. That is what really excites me; the more we problem solve, the more we progress the abilities of the technologies that we create. Who knows, we may only be 4 problems away from the next breakthrough technology, but we’ll never know if we don’t solve one problem first.
What are your hopes for the future of engineering? How do you plan to contribute to that?
I believe that everything humans have created has had to be engineered at one point or another. That makes engineering one of, if not, the most important discipline to learn in the world. My hopes for the future of engineering are, that we who currently work in the field inspire the next generations with our ideas enough to follow their ideas and also become engineers in their careers. My contributions towards that will be showing younger people how rewarding and satisfying the feeling is when we finally solve a problem with engineering. I also would like to teach those younger people how to use their problem solving and critical thinking skills more effectively so they can be the most successful in their career.
Is there a project you’ve recently worked on that you are proud of?
Though I’ve only been working with McGill for about 6 months, I am proud of all the projects I have worked on so far. Getting to see my part of a project come together and work fluidly with other teams work is very rewarding and exciting. My excitement grows further when a project goes into construction and I get to see things I have designed actually be built on site. A lot of the work we do at McGill is instrumental in keeping communities in NC, TN, and VA alive and thriving. So, doing work that benefits people and makes a difference in world, that makes me the proudest.
