Our meeting this week started with a presentation on Construction Management. Mentors from Lend Lease described each facet of the profession, including safety, estimating, cost control, scheduling, and project close out. Following the presentation, the students broke into two groups for a scavenger hunt activity. Each team was given a series of questions that had to be answered by searching through a set of construction drawings for an active project in Chicago.

The main exercise of the evening focused on site analysis. The students separated into their teams from week 6 and reviewed the site analysis previously completed. The teams discussed the diagrams that had been drawn, with the goal of highlighting the positive elements of their site. Mentors aided the teams in organizing their thoughts and key elements for each site. The teams then presented their site to the room and voted as a group on the preferred project site.

After careful deliberation, the votes were tallied, with Team 2 and Downtown Loop site as the winner.

The group then separated into four teams, set up during the bubble diagramming exercise in week 2, and explored the project site in more detail. Using the bubble diagrams completed previously, each team explored the project site using their organizational concept. This activity will continue next week with the ultimate goal of each team presenting their concept to a guest critic in a few weeks.