Course Reflection - Arthur McCloskey

In this course, a lot of the forward-thinking technologies and capabilities that are revolutionizing our field were explored in good detail.  The highlights of these capabilities were BIM, artificial intelligence, robotics, relational databases, and sensors.  These lectures were supplemented by class visits from people in the industry that were able to bring a practical aspect to these ideas.  This class was comprised of many different types of students across many different concentrations and majors.  After graduation, many of us will branch off into various different job types in our industry.  From planners, construction managers, structural engineers, MEP engineers, I think we can take away something from this class that could be useful in our professional lives.

I personally will be going into the construction management field after graduation, and looking back on the things that I have learned in this class, there are several major takeaways.  The first is BIM.  The presentation by Whiting Turner was particularly helpful in extending what we learned in BIM to what I could use in CM.  Even over my limited co-op experiences, I cannot count how many times the proposed plans caused clashes and conflicts across trades.  Navisworks and Revit were a particularly useful software to use for this, and I had wished that the companies I was with were using it.  That would have certainly helped reduce some of the issues in the field.

I think the database lessons were really useful.  I didn't necessarily enjoy it to be completely honest, since large data management is never really that interesting, but I see how if can be very important in my industry.  Many of the projects I have been on require management of a lot of equipment, machinery, finance, etc.  The knowledge of Access and other database programs could make the aggregation and manipulation of data much easier for managers, which allows them to focus on more important things, like coordination and execution.

Overall, I think this class was a good introduction to the future possibilities of technology to our industry.  I can see how it is beneficial for all kinds of students, no matter their major or concentration.

Comments on Others:

Egla Qori – I think that your post was really beneficial to read, considering you seem to know what structural engineering firms are looking for in a candidate.  Since most of us are probably structural engineering, it is important to know which of these capabilities we learned in this class are important for those employers.

Paulina Gawor – I agree with Paulina in that I was expecting a lot of the class to be more in depth into Revit and programs like it.  I suppose this allowed us to cover a larger amount of information in such a short term, especially when it came to the sensors and databases.

Drew Hovey – I also enjoyed the presentation on NavisWorks.  It still surprises me how little I have seen it used in industry.  I suppose as we graduate and the industry catches up, we will see it used more.