After much rudderlessness, it seems I now have something fairly conretely (haha!) defined subject for my Projet de Fin d’Etudes. Up until yesterday, I had been increasingly frustrated at my lack of progress. I just seemed to be doing calculations while newer ‘stagiaires’ were wading deep into reading material for their projects. So this morning, with a little more determination I brought the subject up with the powers that be, and this time it was with success.

It now looks like the bulk of my project will be a study of the floor design for an innovative new tower. As well as dynamics calculations, it will involve plenty of discussion with the architect and the other engineers involved, which suits me. I am happy because, though complicated, it is a well defined subject. I too now have piles of documents to wade knee-deep into.

Despite this sudden change of course, I do not regard the work that I have done so far to have been a waste. If anything it has been a good intorduction to working in the company. The time spent thinking about how best to decompose the problems I have solved will not have been wasted as, and I said this in a recent blog post, that my method should be applicable to a wider range of problems and, if not, at the very least, next time in my career when I have to work out the cost of a building.