April 8, 2024 Meet Morgan Lopez: Cordia’s Western Region Plant Engineer
Morgan Lopez is the plant engineer for Cordia’s Western Region. Lopez helps maintain underground plants to ensure their success and reliability. Following a discovered passion in the heating and cooling industry, Lopez has been working for the past four years at Cordia.
Below is a transcription from an interview conducted as a part of two video series, Cordia Connections and the Sustainability Series, posted on Cordia’s LinkedIn and Instagram between March and April 2024.
Why did you choose to work at Cordia?
A goal of mine was to work for management who I believe in and who believes in me. I wanted a job where I could work on projects at my own discretion, particularly sustainability projects, and have a lot of freedom to do so. As the only engineer for the Western Region, I get to make an impact.
What is your favorite part about working with Cordia?
My favorite part about working with Cordia is that we’re a small, close-knit team. Being small has its advantages and disadvantages, but I enjoy the team I work with on a daily basis. We work together very cohesively. It’s easy to come to work every day knowing that you’re going to work with a team that values your contributions and vice versa.
What does a typical work day look like for you?
My days are not always the same. My day can range from sitting at a computer all day to being at the plant working with a cross-functional team. Sometimes I can be crawling under cooling towers or working on computers, and sometimes I’m traveling to California to help our plants there. But I think a typical, ideal day would be a little bit of all the above.
What’s your favorite project that you’ve worked on so far?
I think one of my favorite projects was actually one of the most challenging ones. We had a cooling tower replacement install in San Diego. We kept experiencing surprise after surprise, and the project scope just kept expanding. It was my favorite project because there was so much learning. Once we got to the other end of this project, I felt really confident in approaching my next cooling tower project, because I thought to myself, I’ve already seen it all.
What do you feel is Cordia’s greatest strength?
I think Cordia’s greatest strengths are its flexibility and, once again, the cohesiveness of our team. We’ve seen a lot of growth. To have your team move with you and go with change is really great. I don’t think we’d be able to be where we’re at if we weren’t so ambitious and cohesive with our ideas.
What are Cordia’s beliefs surrounding sustainability?
We believe that sustainability is important not just because of our own personal interest, but because it’s within the interest of our customers. They’re not just the people who sign the checks. Our customers are everyone within the communities that we live and work in. To do right by them is to do right by the environment. Having that stewardship over our own communities is a good feeling, and it makes you feel good to go to work every day.
What makes being an engineer at Cordia special?
It’s a challenge! It’s one that I’m not necessarily alone in, but we do have a very lean team. So, in order to assemble teams and get the support I need to accomplish projects, I have the opportunity to reach out to other engineers. I’m also getting to work with people at operations, maintenance, management and finance. Getting to work with a cross-functional team on a regular basis and accomplish things in a tight-knit work setting is definitely different than anything else I’ve ever experienced in my career. I think this is a much more exciting and invigorating process where we get more diverse and novel ideas.