PROTEC Santa Fe: PROTEC interns at Santa Fe County Public Works

Imagine Jacqui Boyd's surprise when in her business office attire (complete with high heels), she arrived at the Santa Fe County Fleet division for her internship. "We were told to dress business casual! Luckily Chris let us go home at lunch to change!" With their usual stick-to-itve-ness Jacqui Boyd, Claudia Roessler, Debbie Seif and Richard Farrell looked at a warehouse strewn with equipment and parts and rose to the occasion. In one week they were able to clean up, organize, categorize, inventory and create spreadsheets to catalog the over 10,000 parts that are used to keep Santa Fe County's fleet of 1100+ vehicles up and running. "We couldn't have done this without them," says supervisor Chris Narvaiz, "It is amazing what they have been able to accomplish as a team."

These interns braved hot, humid, dirty and otherwise unpleasant conditions and got right down to work. "Everyone has been super nice," says Jacqui, who celebrated her 29th birthday on August 14th with the Fleet Division team complete with cupcakes they provided.

PROTEC interns moved literal mountains of material and then provided the data infrastructure with MS Excel to quantify the division's assets. When I arrived to observe them in action there were already seven pallets loaded and packaged to be shipped off to respective areas with equipment and parts neatly organized on shelving. "When we came in here everything was all over the floor. I am not sure how they found anything," comments Debbie Seif.

Chris Narvaiz and Dean Kitchens are the resident mechanics for Santa Fe County and are doing a lot with a little. Chris and Dean are both impressed and pleased with the help they have received and hope that they will be able to implement more technology for inventory in their shop. It is obvious to these MS Excel trained interns that technology would simplify and better track the inventory that the Santa Fe County fleet uses.

A big job done by a great group of interns. "I thought I might leave the first day," says Debbie Seif when she was presented with the less than pristine office space. "But just like the classroom work we did at Santa Fe Community College we stuck it out together." And that is what makes the difference.