Civil Engineering Students Designed an Innovative Residential Building!
Meet our Civil Engineering Capstone Group: Aya Alhindi, Conall Harris, and Simrat Pawar, Vida Vakili (Not imaged), Feras B. (Not imaged) and Patrick Dilkie (Not imaged)
Walk us through your residential building.
We are 'Confluence Engineering', and we designed a 10-story mixed-use residential building. The building consists of one underground parking, residential units, and a green roof at the terrace. We combined structural steel as well as precast and poured concrete into our building. So since we designed the structural aspects of the buildings, we used ETABS and SAFE for structural modeling. We also used Revit for detailing, and AutoCAD to prepare floor plans to be inserted into SAFE and ETABS.
How do you ensure the safety of your designs during both the construction phase and the building's lifecycle?
The most important step in ensuring safe design, in the engineering and construction phase is to follow the local engineering codes and standards. For example, the National Building Code of Canada or the Ontario building code, they actually set minimum standards, safety standards, for engineers to follow as for the construction. And also during construction, there should be a plan to have a quality control as well as inspections for materials as well as the workmanship so that the safety standards are being followed on site. And when it comes to the building life cycle, I believe, preventative maintenance, regular inspections and monitoring is the key to make sure your structure is following that standard of safety as required by the regulations.
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How do you balance aesthetic considerations with structural requirements in your designs?
I think that balance is like a war that's fought in structural engineering since the beginning of time. Basically, architects want to do something crazy, and structural engineers telling you that's going to cost too much money. So for our design, we attempted, well, we didn't have an actual architect. We had someone working with us pretending to be an architect. So they gave us a bunch of architectural restraints, and we tried to meet them. They could be something like the height of your ceiling, right? You might try to hide a transfer beam somewhere, but you realize you can't do that because that's somebody's kitchen. So these are the kinds of considerations you have to think of, and balancing them was the toughest part of the project because we wanted to be honest and make sure that we had all our head rooms right. We didn't want to throw columns through people's bedrooms. We really had to work hard to try and find a solution where we could transfer the gravity load to the soil without disrupting people's living rooms.
How do you ensure your designs comply with local building codes and regulations?
So to ensure that the design complies with that building codes and the standards, we researched the current codes and standards, and we also had a consultation with our clients and our capstone professor to ensure that we are following the right codes and standards. We also had peer reviews throughout the design process. So, for example, I did the design and one of my colleagues checked the design and went through it. So we had a lot of consultations [to check] that we are following the right standards.
What courses throughout your undergrad helped you prepare for this project?
What advice would you give to first-year engineering students?
I would say just, really focus on trying to learn the information you're using in school because it actually is insanely applicable to your work life, if you want to get into engineering. If you want to be a project manager or something else, maybe it's not so applicable, but every little thing that I’ve learned in school, I've actually applied in my job already, for the most part anyway. And so, I would say really focus on doing that. And also try to network, I suppose. It's kind of hard to find good jobs after you're done.
I would say meet a lot of new people, create networks and try to focus on academics as much as possible. As Conall said, it actually applies to your career later on. Once you go into the industry, they will not teach you the basic things. So you got to learn in school, so try to stay focused and manage your time and keep working hard. You'll achieve good results.
So I would encourage first year students to work on their soft skills like communication skills because it will help them a lot while networking with companies, if they want to do a co-op later, like after their third year. I would also like, encourage them to check out the available jobs on campus, like a research assistant, or to find a part time job related to their field so it really helps them to get through their co-op after their third year.
Congratulations on your graduation from TMU Engineering!
