Staff Spotlight – Abbie McNomee

Abbie McNomee is a recent addition to Murraysmith + Quincy, making the move from Central Texas to join our growing team in our San Diego, California, office. Bringing land development experience, including the design and permitting of residential and commercial sites, Abbie seriously expands our ability to pursue water and wastewater projects in California. If you ask anyone she works with, they’ll tell you that Abbie takes every opportunity to learn something new. That’s why being a San Diego area transplant is also a benefit—there are so many places she has yet to discover!

Since she started at Murraysmith seven months ago, Abbie has demonstrated a tenacity for problem solving and professionalism. She has excelled at numerous pursuits including editing technical specifications for a wellhead treatment project, delivering design drawings for a water distribution pipe replacement project, selecting variable speed pumps, and coordinating with the CONSOR structural engineers to account for seismic loading for a bridge pipe crossing design. Abbie takes her commitments seriously and is always striving to expand her skill set.”

– John Thayer, PE, Principal Engineer

Abbie answered some of our questions about her blossoming career and what excited her about her work.

So far during my six years of work experience, I would have to say my biggest milestone is passing the PE exam and obtaining the license. It was a huge relief!

I am currently working on a project in Northern California that involves designing a water pipeline across a bridge. These types of projects are totally new to me and deal with a different side of civil engineering that I’ve never done in my previous work experience. I have really enjoyed the design process so far and working with our CONSOR colleagues. This particular project also poses a few design challenges due to existing site features that have really required all of us to put on our thinking caps to come up with the most efficient and constructable design.

One immediate goal I hope to achieve soon is obtaining the California PE license, which requires passing two additional exams. A more long-term goal I have is to continue learning about and designing all types of public infrastructure projects and find my niche, as I am relatively new to the public municipality work. I would also love to learn more about the project management aspect of projects, such as budgets, schedules, etc. I am also really excited about contributing to the growth of the San Diego office with my coworkers John, Linda, and Kevin.

I did two cross country road trips within six months—Texas to California and Connecticut to California. It was lots of driving!