VTCA Annual Meeting – A Summer Intern's Perspective

Last month, VTCA held its Annual Meeting at the Homestead Resort. As always, the event drew strong attendance from members, VDOT, and other partner organizations. Among this year's attendees was one person who stood out from the crowd: Chloe Blaz.

Chloe is spending her summer as an intern with Carmeuse, an aggregate producer member, where she's been shadowing Rachel Stewart, the company's Regional Environmental Manager. A geoscience student at Virginia Tech set to graduate in spring 2027, Chloe took on the internship to gain hands-on experience and a clearer sense of where her career might head next.

Recognizing the value that industry exposure can offer an intern, Carmeuse encouraged Chloe to join Rachel at VTCA's Annual Meeting. The two attended every session and networking event together, and Chloe made the most of it — staying engaged with the content and striking up conversations with members at every opportunity. She approached the experience like a sponge, soaking up as much information and perspective as she could.

Chloe was kind enough to share her reflections on the meeting, and it's well worth the read.

Nothing Exists in Isolation
A Reflection by VT Geosciences Student & Carmeuse Summer Intern Chloe Blaz

Attending the Annual VTCA meeting, I expected presentations focused primarily on transportation and engineering. Instead, I left with a much broader understanding of how many different professions are required to move infrastructure projects from planning to completion.

In high school, careers always seemed much more linear. You get a degree, start a career, and spend the rest of your life working within that profession. As I’ve progressed through college, however, I’ve realized it’s much less linear than I once thought. That was probably my biggest takeaway from VTCA: nothing exists or operates in isolation.

Throughout the conference, I'd catch bits and pieces of the conversations happening around me. At first, they all sounded like completely separate conversations. Someone would be talking about environmental permitting, another person would be discussing budgets, and someone else was focused on project timelines or intercompany collaboration. As the conference went on, I realized they were all talking about the same projects, just from different perspectives. That moment made me realize that these projects are collaborative efforts, with interdisciplinary expertise contributing to the same goal.

One particular conversation that stuck with me wasn’t about engineering at all. I had been speaking with one of the other attendees and his wife—who teaches at a local elementary school. She had been talking about wanting to bring more hands-on STEM experiences into her classroom, which led to a discussion about how the company I’d come to VTCA with offers classroom activities and on-site tours to local schools. It served as a reminder that the industry’s impact extends well beyond construction projects. Those partnerships help students better understand the work happening in their own communities, the science behind it, and introduce them to careers they might not have known about previously. It was another example of the connections I hadn’t expected to see before attending the conference.

I was also surprised by how much of the conference centered on the business side of these industries. Looking back, it makes perfect sense—large infrastructure projects don’t happen without budgets, contracts, funding, and logistical planning—but that wasn’t something I’d fully considered beforehand. As a STEM student without a business background, I found myself relying on the one microeconomics class I’d taken freshman year to keep up with some of the terminology and concepts. Still, it was interesting to hear about project costs, funding, and contracts alongside discussions about engineering and construction. It reminded me that all projects must fit within financial, logistical, and policy-related realities.

One thing I appreciated was how the conference gave me further context to concepts I’d been taught in class. It’s one thing to learn about project workflows and geological and environmental considerations through various courses. It’s another to see where those topics actually fit in a real-world context. Before this experience, I thought of geology, engineering, environmental science, and construction as separate fields. After listening to professionals from each field discuss the same projects from different perspectives, I began to understand that infrastructure is built because many different fields rely on one another. That realization made the connection between what I’d learned in class and how projects come together much clearer.

All in all, I’m very grateful for the time I was able to spend at the Annual Meeting. It gave me valuable exposure to what working in this industry actually looks like, and I’m excited to continue building that perspective throughout the rest of my education and career.