Internship at the School District of Philadelphia
My name is Chris Park and this past summer I interned at the School District of Philadelphia. I worked in the Procurement office where I assisted my managers in the process of RFP’s and RFI’s. I participated in weekly meetings with various vendors to discuss company goals in the school district. I also prepared pricing sheets using pivot tables to draw information from various companies to determine the best possible option in picking the best vendor. I also assisted the Office of Information Technology where I assisted in computer maintenance, hardware issues, and various tasks when given. I worked an average of 40 hours a week, over 15 weeks at the School District.
I gained a lot from my experiences from working at the School District. Learning about the process of procurement and how it works from the inside, I can see how many components go into such a process. RFP(Q,I)’s contains many individual tasks that need to be accomplished in order for it to work. First, it includes research component of each individual vendor(company) that is being considered for the service we put out for a bid. The school sends out RFP’s to a list approved vendors. Then we check the proposals sent in and go over each one in great detail so that we know exactly what the vendor offers. After we gathered all the necessary information to make a decision, we send out award/reject letters to all vendors notifying them of our answer.
Like I mentioned in the beginning ,my part in all of that includes providing all the supporting documents that help speed up the decision process. Constructing the pricing sheets helped differentiate the vendors on the best value for the price given. My contract logs helped organize all the contracts that we gathered for all approved vendors that the district considered for the service. And just the research aspect help speed up the process in general. All in all, my job was pretty straight forward, and that was to make things flow as fast and as smooth as possible.
On top of my job for the procurement department, I also assisted the district in the Information Technology department. Though my time was short here, I still learned a great deal from the people there. They weren’t the hard skills but more of the softs skills. They helped me be more confident in myself because going into a different department was a little intimidating. Although I was an MIS major there were some things I didn’t know because I never had a chance to experience it. For an example, maintenance on the all computer systems. I never dealt with that and that was something I had to learn on the spot. It may not sound like a cool and important job, but it was so fascinating on how the backbone of the systems run and how they manage the entire infrastructure of the School District.
The School District has given me the experience and the skills to tackle the real world in a way that an educational institution can never provide. I respect and appreciate everyone that works at the district and I want to thank them for the growth of my personal and professional growth.