Young Engineer: Carson MacKay
Carson completed his co-op with Harbourside in 2022. After graduating from Dalhousie in 2023, he joined the Harbourside team fulltime. He was hired as a junior engineer for Harbourside Engineering Consultants. Since then, Harbourside has experienced a lot of change. Still, Carson remembers the experience fondly:
"It was really freeing. [as a co-op student] you're not constrained to a fixed role: you're given the freedom to be part of everything that interests you. It's something that other co-ops don't let you experience. You get to be involved with the whole team."
Working at Harbourside has been foundational for Carson, in both his professional, and personal experience. It has enabled him to challenge himself, and tackle things he never thought he could. Notably, it has given him permission to be curious, and to ask questions.
"You hear this a lot, but honestly: don't be scared to ask questions, I've had the best conversations with senior engineers because I asked something I thought was dumb."
When asked what was most surprising about his work, he said it was quite the shock seeing things translate to the real world for the first time. There’s a big difference between a drawing at the beginning of a project, and the final construction.
"Everything is so BIG. You see it on paper, and then you see how to ACTUALLY build something when you go to site...It lets you really understand the constructability of your design.