The Great Lakes Group

Blog

Meet Abishai Thomas, Engineering Intern

at-a-glance

  • Age: 22
  • Home­town: Olympia, Washington
  • Res­i­dence: Cur­rent­ly, Strongsville, Ohio; when at school, Glen Cove, New York
  • Hob­bies: play­ing sports, wood­work­ing, spray painting
  • Expe­ri­ence in the Mar­itime Indus­try: 4 years
  • Pas­sion for Mar­itime: “I am fas­ci­nat­ed by the water and every­thing in it! The mar­itime indus­try also offered me a great com­bi­na­tion of engi­neer­ing and archi­tec­ture, both pas­sions I want­ed to pursue.”

educational-experience

Aca­d­e­m­ic Insti­tu­tion: Webb Insti­tute
Degree: Senior, grad­u­at­ing in June 2019 with a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Naval Archi­tec­ture and Marine Engineering

professional-experience

Com­pa­ny: Great Lakes Shipyard
Title: Engi­neer­ing Intern
Tenure: Jan­u­ary-Feb­ru­ary 2019

Com­pa­ny: West­port Yachts
Title: Engi­neer­ing Intern
Tenure: Jan­u­ary-Feb­ru­ary 2018

Com­pa­ny:  Maer­sk Line Limited
Title: Deck/Engine Cadet aboard Maer­sk Peary: Oper­a­tion Deep Freezeigor
Tenure: Decem­ber 2016-March 2017

Com­pa­ny: New Eng­land Boatworks
Title: Ship­yard Working/Engineering Intern
Tenure: Jan­u­ary-Feb­ru­ary 2016

 

professional-certifications

 

skills

Abishai is becom­ing a very well-round­ed engi­neer and has already estab­lished quite a depth of edu­ca­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ences.  Some of these include:

  • New Con­struc­tion
    • Yachts
    • Tug­boats
  • Design Work
    • var­i­ous ves­sel systems
    • unique ves­sel fixtures 
      • fish­ing gun rack
      • pan­el foundations
      • remov­able show­er floor pans
      • etc.
  • Ves­sel construction/maintenance work 
    • sand­ing
    • paint­ing
    • weld­ing
    • etc.
  • Ves­sel Sys­tem tracing
  • Sea time

Webb Insti­tute has cre­at­ed an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for all stu­dents by hav­ing the win­ter intern­ships. Abishai had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work in Rhode Island and get an intro­duc­tion to the indus­try in a wholis­tic sense, spend­ing time in the yard work­ing with fiber glass and car­bon fiber, as well as some time in the engi­neer­ing office doing unique design projects. His sea time was as a cadet spent on a 3‑month jour­ney from Greece to Antarc­ti­ca on a polar class oil tanker. The sea term was espe­cial­ly use­ful for under­stand­ing the logis­tics and impact engi­neer­ing deci­sions have on the real-world applications.

He then took an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be clos­er to home in Wash­ing­ton and explored more of the yacht indus­try from the engi­neer­ing side at West­port Yachts.

 

the-great-lakes-group

The intern­ship oppor­tu­ni­ty has been a great way to explore many dif­fer­ent aspects of the indus­try, hence my inter­est in Great Lakes Ship­yard and anoth­er area of the indus­try that I have less expe­ri­ence with. My grand­par­ents live in Strongsville, so the com­bi­na­tion was sim­ply unbeat­able for my last intern­ship oppor­tu­ni­ty while at Webb! Great Lakes offers not only a unique work expe­ri­ence to diver­si­fy my mar­itime back­ground but also the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stay with fam­i­ly at the same time.

I have already been intro­duced to so many new con­cepts and vocab­u­lary here. The advan­tage of being at a ship­yard is the abil­i­ty to go from the com­put­er screen design to see­ing the result in the real-world to make sure every­thing checks out! After these first cou­ple of weeks, I am excit­ed to see what else this intern­ship holds in store for me!”

After this win­ter, Abishai has one more semes­ter of school left at Webb and will grad­u­ate in Sum­mer 2019.