Ethan Gross

Project: Zoo Maintenance, Alterations, and Modifications

School: Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

Major: Business Administration with a Focus in FM

So far during my internship at the Smithsonian I have been working on two projects. The First project is to create an operating budget for the Natural History Museum. With this first project I will be breaking the costs down into Operations Costs, Maintenance Costs and Central Support Costs. These three categories are then broken down into several smaller categories of costs such as staff and Equipment. I have recently completed the layout of the spreadsheet, and I am currently making meetings with co-workers thought out the Smithsonian in order to find the costs associated with each category. Once this data is all collected I will input it into the spreadsheet to then be analyzed. Once analyzed and critiqued we will then proceed to mock this spreadsheet for all the museums giving us a better idea of what it costs to run them each year.

My second project was to review the Fiscal Year 2014 Castle Assessment in order to check the original numbers. My task was to break each system down by asset and calculate the Total Replacement Cost of the building, then using the Total Replacement Cost and the condition rating. Finally, I calculated the deferred maintenance for each system. Once the Assessment was complete I did a side by side comparison with the original to find any mistakes or missing costs.

Also during my internship I have had the opportunity to attend many meetings from Zone Manager meetings and All Staff meetings to Informative Safety meetings. These meetings gave me another look at how the Smithsonian works as a whole. I have enjoyed my time as an intern at the Smithsonian so far and am looking forward to other experiences it will bring as the summer continues.