My experience

Overview

The construction estimating department manages construction costs for active projects (like building chemical plants around the world), as well as predicts the costs of future projects in order to make accurate bids to potentials clients. My role was to automate a lot of data input and lookup. For example, a easy-to-navigate database of past construction projects and their costs would be really helpful for predicting the cost of future projects. My main objective was to create this database. As a ChemE co-op, this was NOT what I expected. I had very little guidance, since basically nobody in the department knew how to code or create databases. However, this was a really exciting project and I was left to my own devices. I spent a lot of time learning to code in VBA and SQL with little prior knowledge. I mainly used stackoverflow and other online resources to learn. My boss, who also knew very little about coding, was patient and supportive throughout the process. At the end of the day, I was able to make a working prototype I was proud of, and I learned a lot about how to automate workflows in the Microsoft/SQL environment.

Caveats: (1) A lot of the up-sides to this co-op rotation can be credited to the great supervisor I had, who no longer works in this department. (2) This was in ~2014, which was a weird time at Air Products because a new CEO came in and was re-structuring the company, cutting costs, laying people off. Generally, morale was low across the company. No idea how things are now.