The Job: What I Actually Do

Here is the answer to the ever-popular question "So what do you actually do?" which I get every time after I surprise people by saying that I'm not an African studying here in Malaysia. Also, the actual words in the title of my position contradicts with my degree and the nature of what I actually do day-to-day. I am Project Engineer for a construction company called Bumimetro Construction. I am working on a high rise condo project called One Kiara; pictured above. The project is in a very high end area of KL called Mont Kiara. Each individual unit has it's own elevator and elevator lobby, the units range from 2000 - 7000 square feet and most cost over 1 million ringgits(RM). As for me, I am vital to ensuring the quality and compliance with the drawings as well as the optimal management of time and money. So on a daily basis, I'm conducting inspections of important members to ensure quality and specifications before they're cast in concrete (which they use for everything here), testing building materials to ensure their strength and quality, calculating and reporting material quantities to reduce unnecessary wastage, helping coordinate my workers (mostly Indonesian and Bangladeshi) as quality control for the work that they are preforming, and lately writing stinging letters to our client or consultants in response to their often irrational or excessive requests or questioning. Also, my project manager has been involving and simultaneously educating me about how the logistics and large-scale coordination aspect is thought out and planned. I can proudly say that I do think my major has done a lot to help prepare me. Being around coworkers who have strictly engineering background, which don't go into the construction process or financial sides, I have knowledge of reading drawings, contract stipulation, human resource management, construction techniques, reasoning and terminology. I also benefit from the fact that I have a strong work ethic and am a fast learner. For the past few weeks, I have been the only engineer on-site for our project. Most of the others on our management team - a surveyor, a clerk, a safety manager, a quality control & assurance person - have no involvement in the actual construction processes ongoing. Those others who are involved - our project manager and site supervisor - call most of the shots but don't handle any of the day-to-day operations paperwork or quality control aspect. That leaves me at this moment feeling like somewhat of a 'One Man Island' on a 150,000,000 ringgit project; on top of the 6 day, 60+ hour work week, it's a bit of a grind. The silver lining is that I'm fairly good at what I do and get respect from my coworkers for my work ethic and acumen. My boss now wants me to stay for an extra year until the completion of the project. I don't know about all that...