Designing, prices and scheduling a new metro station in a dense urban environment would be difficult for the oldest design team to deal with, much less a team that seeks to fulfill the deadlines for their senior tombstone projects for a year.
“Our time management skills were tested,” he says Lucas Bernstein member a team from New Hampshire University, who beat teams from another Colleges and universities in New England competing for $ 120,000 in awards earlier this month during a Civil Engineering Design Contest at La Tufts University in Medford, Mass.
Bernstein thanked the opportunity to develop “real world skills, applying material learned in the classroom to a project in my field of study and … to represent my school”.
The third annual event, organized by the Labor Relations Division of the Massachusetts construction industries, a collective for the heavy construction industry, the belonging to which it is formed by the union of roads and bridge builders, including workers, operating engineers and carpenters, offered student teams with industry coaches. In the fall, teams received a package prepared by Wentworth School of Technology, Jim Lambrechts, and pushed them to design a hypothetical plan to expand the blue line of Massachusetts Bay transport authority to the west.
The teams worked on their presentations together with their coach or coach of the industry assigned before launching Judges of Industry on April 12 in Tufts.
“All teams did an impressive job by identifying the engineering and construction challenges involved and clearly gained a practical and significant view of the industry,” says Rob Pine, Vice President of Skanska USA Civil Operations, who served as a judge. “It was rewarding to see how this experience is preparing the next generation of professionals, not only technically, but also in the way of thinking, collaborating and communicating.”
New Hampshire University teams, Tufts, University of Connecticut, Northeastern University, University of Vermont, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Springfield Technical Community College, launched the judges before the UNH took first place of $ 15,000. Tufts received $ 10,000 per second, while the remaining schools won $ 5,000 each.
Pinet said that while the competition was near, “the UNH stood out with its practical design and construction design, combining the traditional coverage and tunnel to develop a constructible solution to build a MBTA station in a dense urban environment.”
UNH Squad (Bernstein, Daniel Bartus and Tyler Beresford) was trained by Fei Han, assistant professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental in the UNH, and staff at the SPS New England design signature, who met with bi-satmanal students.
“We were able to keep us online when our ideas were unrealistic and they were a great help in developing our final estimate,” says Bernstein, who also thanked Han to help him calculate the forces of a slurry wall, “which was quite complicated, given the profile of the soil with which we treat.. The visual I could make of these calculations differentiated us from other groups and helped us win the competition. “
Co-founder John R. Roma, 80, who has run his own consulting after retiring from a deeper Foundation’s construction career with companies like Skanska and Weeks Marine–Conceived from competition as a way to attract students to the heavy construction industry “after listening to their friend and co -founder, Lambrechts, talks about their vision to expand the BBA BLUE Westward line.
“All students who have been involved for the last three years,” says Rome, “has given nothing but reviews with the process. The most historical comment I have heard of the old people in the industry is that they want them to have this when they went to school.”
To make the competition even more realistic this year, at the end of the day the teams were informed that the CIM-LRD Executive Committee issued a change order, with an additional $ 10,000 in each school. The money was also divided among students’ participants.
In addition to Pine, the other judges this year included Dave Puser, the executive director of the Moles; Brendan Casey, head of the MBTA project; Aaron Lewis, principal director of SGH; Joe Allegro, owner of Allegro Construction Services and Tom Day, director of estimation at Skanska USA Civil Northeast.
Before the winning teams are announced, the day – which received the same package as the students last fall – provided their “independent professional evaluation” to the group.
Lucy Jen, a practice professor at Tufts University and the Main Geotechnical Engineer at Jen Geotechnical LLC, served as the coach of the industry for second place tufts team along with Alison Bulman in Skanska. Jen, who also trained in Tufts last year, said that competition is a great opportunity for students of Civil Engineering to apply “what they have learned and exposed to other aspects of the design and construction process not covered in their university curriculum”.
He added that it is an “excellent springboard for college students who enter engineering” because it helps them learn how to “work on teams, apply what they have learned in classes, learn new skills, perfect their presentation skills, identify their interests and appreciate the different approaches”.
