2024 ITE Orange County Joint Office Tour Recap

On Friday, November 22, 2024, members of the USC ITE Chapter, along with our fellow ITE Student Chapters at UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, and UC Irvine participated in our annual Joint Office Tour. This office tour, where ITE Chapters tour offices of public and private transportation employers, was unique in that we visited offices located in Orange County, as opposed to Downtown Los Angeles where the tour is normally held.   

Our day began with a visit to the Caltrans District 12 Office, located in Irvine. Caltrans manages California’s highways and freeways, and funds transportation projects across the state.Caltrans’ District 12 office is the branch responsible for overseeing the Orange County region. On our tour, we were hosted by Transportation Engineer Son Nguyen, District Truck Access Manager, Adam Siddiqui, and Transportation Engineering Technician Dave O’Brien.  All three gave us an in-depth look of the technology and software Caltrans uses to manage traffic on the local highways. We enjoyed the depth of knowledge that the Transportation Engineers at Caltrans possess and the complexities of managing transportation systems in a busy environment. We were also treated to a special look of the Transportation Management Center (TMC), which includes a room filled with monitors and screens showing live views of the traffic flow throughout Orange County. Overall, we were very impressed with the work that Caltrans does to ensure people and vehicles can move along roads and highways, and specifically District 12’s role in helping Orange County move efficiently. 

After our tour at Caltrans District 12, we headed north to the City of Orange to visit the Kimley-Horn Orange County office. Kimley-Horn is a large engineering firm providing consulting for a range of infrastructure-related disciplines, including Aviation, Transportation Management, and Environmental Planning. While being provided lunch, we heard from Kimley-Horn Recruiters Emilie Choy and Selina Han, who gave us a brief overview of the company’s mission and purpose. We then heard from presenters from three different divisions at Kimley-Horn, who told us more about their work at Kimley-Horn. The presenters were Transportation Planning and Traffic Operations Analyst Karen Luong, Aviation Analyst Indigo Dumhart, and Roadway Analyst Blake Thomas. Each of them gave us a detailed rundown of their jobs within their respective divisions at Kimley-Horn and examples of projects they have worked on. They also shared their backgrounds, including how they came to find Kimley-Horn. Most of the presenters said they came to Kimley-Horn through internships held while in college, which in turn became full-time positions. Overall, USC ITE had a great time hopping around the Orange County region and meeting professionals in the transportation industry and making connections with our fellow student transportation enthusiasts around Southern California!