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Louis Rondino
Dr. Pavel Zemliansky
ENC1102H
April 7th, 2016
Introduction
The use of communication between engineers while working on various projects is
essential to the functionality of the finished project. During my time as an intern at Kamm
Consulting, I witnessed many different forms of communication between the engineers and
architects as they worked together to try to solve problems and find solution for their clients.
After spending the summer working in the engineering firm environment, I began to pick up on
tricks that some of the Engineers had mastered to help things run more efficiently. One major
time-saver was the use of standardized templates that were filled out while a project was being
worked on. These templates made the documents that the company produced appear more
consistent, despite different employees creating them. My research question stems from this
experience. Why do engineers implement standardized forms and sheets in their work and how
do these writing tools affect their work?
Methods
My primary study, or research that is collected first hand rather than found in a book,
database, or journal (Driscoll 154) was an interview conducted with Art Kamm, the CEO of
Kamm Consulting. Driscoll defines the method of interview as asking participants questions in
a one-on-one or small group setting (Driscoll 154). During a phone interview with Mr. Kamm, I
collected data useful and pertinent to my study about how he, as an engineer, uses standardized
forms and templates in the workplace. Also, my time at Kamm Consulting introduced me to
these practices which engineers take part in everyday. I focused a lot of my time on helping

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organize the documentation of clients projects. The engineers used a formatting sheet that they
referred to as templates for their work, and these became common in my everyday efforts. I
began to wonder how these templates helped save the engineers time, and decided to study the
question: how do these templates affect the work of engineers? To begin my interview, I asked
Kamm how the form templates came about. Ah, well I noticed a fellow worker a while back
started being less repetitive and structured in his email and client documents, so I asked him
what he was up to and he said that it saved him time and it all basically was the same thing for
every client so there was no need to write everything out over and over again. I asked him to
distribute his stuff to the office, and they started using them, others created more and put them in
the network folder, and so now it has been common practice for us to keep them in the default
work folders we use (Kamm 15-20) Kamm then explained the use of the sheets to me and how
they benefit the client. When asked how Kamm felt about the templates in relation to the client,
he claimed: I did feel a little hesitant at first that clients might feel cheated or something but I
figured if it saves people time it also saves them the annoyance of repetitive work and whatever
makes the bullpen happy keeps them doing good work (Kamm 21-23). He also commented that
most of our clients like the consistency of knowing what I am going to give them and how they
are going to receive what we are providing (Kamm 32-24). Kamm adds: I won't lie I have
gotten very frustrated over just simply setting everything up (Kamm 56-57) when the subject of
using unformated forms come up. The templates really make a large difference to the
engineering firm by saving time and effort for the engineers.
Results
From my interview, I gathered that the templates used at Kamm Consulting by the
various engineers help save copious amounts of time and effort when working for a client.
Kamm confirmed that the forms allow everyone to not have to deal with fussing about

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formatting (Kamm 50-51). Besides the quality of the work, these templates also save employees
the frustration of creating and retyping documents from scratch, a repetitive process sure to
aggravate anyone. Overall, I found that that engineers implement standardized forms and sheets
to save time, which therefore saves the client money. The sheets also make the work more
reliable and organized, keeping the work consistent through projects.
Discussion
During my interview I discovered that engineers use formatted template sheets to save
time and to organize their data. This essentially answered both parts of my research question,
where I asked why do engineers implement standardized forms and how do these writing
tools affect their work. Their work becomes more standard with the use of the forms, and the
data they find is more organized and reliable. This same data also keeps the work they send out
to customers consistent and up to a certain standard. They implemented standard forms because
it saved the engineers time, and the frustration of creating a document over and over again. Using
templates and standardized forms kept the engineers creating them happier, and the clients
receiving them happier. Through my research, I learned about how the forms were created, and
how the implementing engineers felt about them originally.
Conclusion
Engineers implement standardized forms and sheets in their work in order to be efficient
and save time. During my interview with Art Kamm and throughout my experience at Kamm
Consulting, I was able to sufficiently research this topic. One major limitation on my research
was the time period. Given more time, I would be able to interview more people from Kamm
Consulting and possibly other engineering firms to collect more data. I recommend that future
researchers look into not only primary research, but also secondary research. I advise studying

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other forms of templates for engineers, and how they either help or hurt the engineer's output.
However, the interview I conducted was enough, and I was able to answer my research question
with the information gathered.

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Works Cited
Driscoll, Dana Lynn. "Introduction to Primary Research: Observations, Surveys, and
Interviews." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. By Charles Lowe and Pavel
Zemliansky. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2010. N. page. Print.
Kamm, Art. Personal interview. 29 March 2016.