Report on My Interviews

This blog will address the content of the interviews that I conducted this week with different professors at the University of Arizona, some with extensive background in the field, some with little modern background in the field. These are their stories....

The most significant genres that my interviewees worked in were all unanimous picks by my interviewees. They all had the same general types of genres that they worked in or that others in the field work in. One genre is the PowerPoint presentation, another is the detailed project report analysis, and lastly another one is the communicative email.

These genres differ from each other in many ways especially in content, form, and style. PowerPoints are visual ways to communicate ideas, they are used to talk to almost everyone in the Civil Engineering field. People use them to communicate to students, to higher level owners, to stakeholders in the community, and to governmental officials who fund these projects. Detailed Project Reports are also a large part of the Civil Engineering field. These reports can be hundreds of pages long and are usually in hard copy and in PDF format. These must go into records so that people in hundreds of years after you have died or retired can look back on the construction of the structure or roadway and see exactly what was done and how it was done. These reports must be completely comprehensive and cannot leave out any details, they usually are always done in the same format and style meaning that organization of these types of reports does not vary very much. Lastly the communicative email is a key part of the Civil Engineering field, people in the field must communicate on a regular basis with each other. People within the field must communicate with each other as well as people within the field must communicate with people outside the field. These emails vary a lot on their structure based on who the audience is, sometimes they are specific and sometimes they are rather broad.

The most challenging part of writing within all of these genres is the aspect of clear communication with a wide variety of people and groups. All of the people that I interviewed emphasized the importance of clear communication in the field, all parties must be on the same page and must understand what the project requires. If one party doesn't clearly understand what is going on, they could ruin the entire project and the engineer will get blamed. Thus no matter the genre, all communication must be clear.

The most rewarding or exciting part of writing within the genres presented is the ability for people to look back in a hundred years and be able to see exactly what the project was and what the design for it is. This is important because as one of my interviewees found out, a good report can make a project that much easier to improve, especially when remodeling buildings or structures. The work that you do will outlive your career and very possibly your life.

Almost all of these genres can be found online on government department websites. For example, almost all reports can be found on the ADOT page or Pima County DOT or Tucson DOT. Almost all reports on structures can be found on construction company websites or online as PDF files. PowerPoints for public presentation can also be viewed online. Emails are a lot harder to find because they are private domain genres. In this instance, these emails can be accessed through public records if the emails were to government organizations.

Anonymous, "London Hospital Plans", via Wikipedia, CCO license