Interview

1. Interview With Joseph Elich Jacob Elich Emma Treviño Jessica Hernandez

2. Software Engineer

3. Brock Solutions Engineering Solutions that Perform

4. Brock Solutions History Highlights of the last 3 decades 1985 Automation group started in Sutherland-Schultz, a large construction management company 1987 Acquired Canadian division of Saftronics, changed name to SAF Drive Systems (SAFphire) 1992 S-S Technologies, SAF Drive Systems and SST Products spin off from Sutherland-Schultz under S-S Technologies Holdings. Life Sciences group founded in Montreal (Picard Technologies) 1994 The Panel Shop Inc. founded in Kitchener. 1998 SST Products sold 1999 Amalgamation of operating companies to Brock Solutions Inc. and ownership amalgamation to Brock Solutions Holdings Inc. 2001 Brock Solutions U.S. Inc. founded 2002 Dallas, TX, USA office opened. 2006 Soluciones Brock de BR, BS Inc. (BrockSolutions Puerto Rico) founded 2007 Dallas based Panel Shop opened.

5. GlobalReach Brock’s reach is truly global, executing projects in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. Brocks engineering professionals speak over 30 languages, and come from many countries around the world. This cultural and linguistic diversity gives Brock a unique understanding of the perspectives of our customers around the world.

6. Can you give us a description of your profession and its’ duties? • I work as a software engineer for a company that does airline and airport automation. I write, design, maintain, and update software source code. We also do customization of software to meet specific project requirements for customers. Our software engineers also do a variety of project oriented tasks that include system architecture design, network design, system commissioning, and system maintenance as well as other miscellaneous tasks.

7. Why did you choose this field? • I got into programming back in high school thanks in part to my brother. I had already been interested in engineering beforehand, but I decided to focus on software when I began programming in high school. I have always enjoyed the creation aspect and always liked computers and IT so it made sense and I really love the type of work.

8. Whatdifficulties do you face when writing technical descriptions? • When writing out descriptions and manuals for systems it is always easy for an engineer to use terminology that is confusing and generally uncommon in normal context. Trying to make something easy to digest for a user or someone not specializing in the field is not terribly straight forward, and with our company we actually employ several technical writers to adjust a lot of the descriptions and describe usability. Generally they take our functional specification, the document that the engineers prepare to describe the system scope and general functionality, and work from there.

9. How is commenting code different from technical descriptions? • Commenting code is much more about describing interior design decisions about the inner workings of the software, while a technical description looks at a much higher level overview of what the software is supposed to do from the user's perspective. It is akin to describing what a car is supposed to accomplish versus how the engine of the car works. The driver doesn't really need to know how the cylinders create compression using a mixture of oxygen and gasoline that that is ignited at certain ratios and timings to actually drive the car.

10. How do you apply design and graphics concepts to your profession? • Design concepts are applied in several different areas for software. There is the obvious architecture design which can include source code, database, and QA testing environment, but there are also things like UI and general user experience designing which are not quite as intuitive. User experience is much more subjective and closer to an art than science, but there is always a "method to the madness." Graphics play a key role in this such as incorporating color coding and general color coordination (i.e. green is success, red is failure, etc.), but graphics transitions to different screens or even just for general actions on the UI are very important. If a button didn't actually appear to depress when you clicked on it, wouldn't that be a bit confusing?

11. How do cross-cultural issues affect what you write? • We employ a lot of different people to do our work for starters so there is always the standard in office cultural differences. On top of that our company is also based in Ontario, Canada with satellite offices in Vancouver, North Carolina, and here in Irving, Texas, so we have some smaller differences in that as well. We also do a lot of work for International Airports so you see a variety of users and in some cases such as Canadian airports we have to have language localizations for French and English.

12. When you have a project or report, who proofreads your work? • We do a lot of Code Reviews with fellow developers, which are essentially peer reviews of our source code and design. Our project managers and technical writers usually take a look at our documentation to clean things up after the fact. We also do a fairly large testing phase for all of our projects so that we can look for potential issues and any errors. We often times also have what we call a Factory Acceptance Test with our customer for the project which is essentially a system demonstration in our offices before we ever go to the site to begin installing and setting up there.

13. For More Information of Brocks • Joseph Elich • Brock Solutions, Inc. • www.brocksolutions.com • Toll Free: 1-877-702-7625 Business Inquiries: info@brocksolutions.com • Career Inquiries: hr@brocksolutions.com