Summer Build Program

At the beginning of week 8, Randy Herbstman, SE, from Halvorson and Partners came in to talk about the ACE Community Design and Build 7-week summer program where the students, after their design experience, work on areal project and build something by the end of the summer.

Every summer there is a different client, and different project, all driven by the students.

Randy described different projects built during past sessions, one of which was Ujima Community Garden where students designed and built a tool shed and rain collector. Students get involved with clients and community, learning how to assess these parties’ needs, and use a wide array of tools to complete the building in 7 weeks. Upon completion students get a scholarship, in addition to an amazing summer experience building something that impacts the community.

 

LEED Presentation

The students then learned about sustainability and the types of sustainability rating systems exist as a guideline for designers and builders to follow.  Climate change is becoming an increasingly important issue for our current and future generations. More than 41% of energy use comes from residential and commercial buildings, so it is our job as designers, owners and constructors to design and construct our vision while conserving energy and reducing our carbon footprint and emissions.

There different rating systems to track whether or not buildings comply with metrics like high-performance, transportation, waste, food systems, green space, water conservation, and material selection. LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the most popular one in the US right now. It is a system that makes you consider more sustainable approaches to building and rewards innovative ways to improve the way we design to address energy consumption, air quality, water efficiency, site selection and treatment of the site, making use of available transportation, material selection in building, and so on. More information about LEED can be found by going to this website: http://www.usgbc.org/leed

 

Group Breakout

Groups broke out into Construction team, MEP, structural, and architectural. Each group discussed sustainability further, and went into more detail of an overview of what each specialty does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next week – specialty trades continued…