-: My name is Layne Kortbein,
I'm a Staff Professional at Antea Group.
It's a generic title and my background
is in environmental engineering.
So, Antra Group is an environmental consulting firm.
We have 27 offices in the United States,
and then we're also located nationwide.
So environmental consulting in itself
is a mix of problem solving for different market segments.
Market segments include the oil and gas industry,
the railroad industry, food and beverage sector,
and a couple others that we work in.
So one of the most interesting projects
that I worked on this last spring and summer
was in Superior, Wisconsin.
It was for a former oil shipping barge dock,
and it has a lot of history with it,
about 30-year remediation history.
And what we do, we have a remediation system up there
that skims, it's called LNAPL,
which is Light Non-Aqueous Phase Liquid.
And what that does is it skims off product
that contains gasoline or hydrocarbons
off the top of the ground water
that was spilled historically.
And so we go up there in the spring/summer every week or so.
And then I was in charge of operation and maintenance
of the skimming system,
and then also problem solving and troubleshooting
the things that came with that.
So when we get there, we get trained in
with a Staff Professional or Project Professional.
And we learn how to sample the different
soil, water, vapor.
Get trained in on that.
And then after that, we do solo journeys,
or if it's a larger area that we're working with
or project we're working with,
we also go down with another person still.
Yeah, I think generally starting out
you will be kind of juggling different projects.
You'll get to see various sectors,
either of the report writing,
which is after the data comes in,
then we have to simplify it into a report
to send out to the client.
And then you're also working on the
technical aspect of it and you're doing the sampling.
And so that sampling you'll be doing
for multiple projects and it's a lot of juggling
where you have to keep track of what you're doing,
what stage you're at with that project,
but then you can also continue on
and see the completion of that project, as well.