Another one of my life lessons...
I've worked for several architectural, engineering, surveying firms in the past, and some firms only handled local projects and were small 20 person companies. Some firms were large with multiple floors of architects and engineering handling very large projects many states away.
When I started working for the first firm as a civil cad tech, which was a large firm, I always had the luxury of having nice aerial photography, localized topos, ability to send field crews back out for additional survey information. One thing that stands out in my mind is the lesson of being able to forge ahead on a project with minimal information. I learned this valuable lesson from a coworker at a smaller engineering firm I was employed at. Being spoiled to the large firms methods, I would easily balk during the startup of a project when I didn't have all the information I thought I needed. A coworker, Mike, taught me that I could forge ahead and continue working on a project with minimal information instead of throwing my hands up and saying "this cannot be done!". We worked on projects, made educated interpolations or would make do until we were able to get better information. We completed projects on time with necessary approval, within budget, and we kept a clean track record by not getting sued by the client or anyone else. The lesson of being able to continue working and make something out of almost minimal information was a valuable lesson to me. It falls right in line with the entrepreneurial spirit and the ability to forge ahead and make something while others will simply say "it cannot be done".
