Department of Mechanical Engineering

Alumnus - Kent Wedeking

 

Kent Wedeking, BSME’04
Field Engineer, Schlumberger
Rock Springs, Wyoming
Recently began new position—Test and Evaluation Engineer, Fisher Controls, Marshalltown

What led you to major in ME?
When I was a junior in high school, I came to an Iowa State Engineering Honors Workshop. Professors from each major talked to us about their area. ME kind of scared me, but then I decided I’d been working on cars all my life, and that I should give ME a try.

How did you get your job with Schlumberger and what did your position entail?
Schlumberger is a leading oil field services provider. When a company decides to drill an oil or gas well, they contract the work out to a company like us. We do the behind-the-scenes work involved in drilling wells and getting them into production. I interviewed with Schlumberger on campus. They look for engineers who have strong leadership and organizational skills and who can be trained for the specialized area of petroleum engineering. Drilling wells and making natural gas or oil come out of the rock is a very complicated process. New employees spend two months taking classes to learn what they need to know to keep the job site running.

Working for Schlumberger is a lifestyle, not just a job. My job site was in Sweetwater County. It’s wide-open space, 150 miles wide by 100 miles tall. By the time I traveled to and from the job site, I put in 100 hours a week. I’d arrive at the yard at 3 a.m. and get paperwork ready so equipment and materials could be loaded on semitrailers and transported to the job site by daybreak.

It’s been a really interesting job. We had to solve all kinds of problems out in the field. It’s everything from finding parts for a broken truck to diagnosing electrical problems in the data acquisition system to solving personal issues. Out in the field it’s just like one big family working together. And for me, the other really fun part of this job has been the opportunity to work with very large equipment such as seven-foot tall engines that have lots of horsepower.

What are some highlights from your education?
I had two really great internships. I was a test engineer at Fisher Controls in Marshalltown testing valves and gas regulators to make sure they do what they’re supposed to. Then I was a product engineer at Andersen Windows in Minnesota conducting tests on windows and working on some cost-saving projects. I designed a window using information from a study we put together showing how they could save money.

At school, I was a member of the first learning community in 1999 and later became a peer mentor. For a project in the spring, each team had to design a giant egg-launching cannon. The winning shot went over 600 yards without breaking the egg. In addition, I worked in Engineering Career Services and was involved in a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff for on-campus interviews and the Career Fair.

What brings you back to Iowa to work at Fisher Controls?
I’ll be working in the lab at Fisher, and that’s kind of like the oil field because every day you rig up and rig down. It’s just on a much smaller scale. I wasn’t looking for a job, but my internship supervisor recommended me and I really liked the work I was doing there. Plus, I’m originally from Clarksville, Iowa, so it’s a lot closer to home.

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