Daniel's Internship Experience at CDOT: End of Internship Article

By Daniel Cieraszynski, Office of Process Improvement Intern

February 2, 2024

Overview

I am Daniel Cieraszynski and I am almost finishing my year interning for the Colorado Department of Transportation at the Office of Process Improvement. I am currently a Senior at the University of Denver studying Data Analytics and International Studies. I am also in the 4+1 Master’s program in Global Economic Affairs. This upcoming summer, I will be interning at KPMG as an International Trade and Customs intern. 

My internship at CDOT might be one of the most important internships or jobs I have ever taken on in my life. When I first started the internship, I did not exactly know what to expect, but I was excited to critically think about state government and work on improving it. But from this internship, I was completely floored by all of the different ways I was able to improve government. This also includes all the ways I was able to personally grow and learn new things about the internship and myself.

Data Streamlining

I continued to fuel my passion for improving data knowledge and practices at CDOT through working to improve data streamlining. I reached out and connected with Rachel Davis at the Office of Information Management at CDOT. Here, we met together with my supervisor Gary Vansuch to talk about how we can improve data organization at CDOT. From that meeting, I got the amazing opportunity to participate on the Data Stewardship Council where I worked on creating a data catalog that managed essential data sources from all the departments at CDOT. In short, this project was a great way to make connections with other professionals. I wanted to personally thank Rachel Davis here for helping me get connected with this fantastic project. This meeting with Rachel also inspired me to work more on data streamlining within the Department of Process Improvement. For instance, I worked with one of my colleagues Remy St. Pierre and Jeff Scott at the Office of Information Technology to create a new Lean Everyday (LEI) Database using AppSheet. Here, we streamlined the process in which people can upload ideas so that it is much easier and straightforward. One of the main projects for this was the Concept to Project (C2P) Dashboard. 

Concept to Project Dashboard

In terms of data organization, the C2P Dashboard was very messy. This was because the input of the data was a Google Sheets form, which would be compiled automatically into a Google Sheet. However, the C2P Dashboard was a Power BI document connected to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and therefore, the data from the Google Sheets spreadsheet had to be manually transferred to the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that would make up the data on the dashboard. With this project, I took the initiative of finding out how to connect the Google Sheets document to Power BI. However, that was not the end of the project. This was because all the visualizations for this dashboard still had their queries based around all the Microsoft Excel data, and I had to change all the queries so that it would fit the Google Sheets data. This was an excellent project that I am probably the proudest of, as it saved a ton of time and gave me invaluable experience in Power BI. You can view the LEI card for this innovation here. 

Wheelchair Accessibility

The tour of the I-25 North site was a driving tour, which meant that everyone in the tour needed to be in one vehicle with the tour guides. Unfortunately, we had to exclude one of our colleagues from this tour. This is because the Colorado State Government does not have one wheelchair accessible vehicle in their fleet. This inspired me to reach out to another colleague, Wren Bandrowski, to work with people like Marsha Nelson, CDOT’s Chief Equity Officer, to help Colorado procure a wheelchair accessible vehicle. We then presented our project to John Lorme, the Director of Maintenance and Operations and he agreed to be our sponsor. Now, we are working with the Department of Personnel and Administration (DPA) to procure solutions. This project is very special to me, as I realized that I have the power to make a difference about important issues and with enough patience and hard work, I can improve the government.

Conclusion

This internship was amazing. It not only helped me practice strong hard skills, but it helped me acquire amazing soft skills that have been crucial for my development as a professional and as a person. As I continue my career, I will always remember my experience here at CDOT.