Mutual benefits in City-Western exchange

Print

By Bob Klanac
Thursday, March 13, 2008
A long-running ideas exchange between the City of London and University of Western Ontario engineering students has resulted in major contributions to several London projects.
The 12th annual Design Competition saw engineering students put their skill and imagination into several projects including the design of a London recreation centre and library with possible Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification of gold or higher, bridge design for a planned extension of Wonderland Road South over Highway 401, and a Greenway Pollution Control Plant upgrade expected to accommodate the growing southwestern area of the London.
 
Two teams were awarded first-prize winners by the judges.
 
Mark Carney, Chris Ledsham, Sandor Nagy and Scott Young worked on the Wonderland bridge project. 
 
Robyn Gaebel, Travis Goodhand, Tyler Ing, Ashley McManus, Mike Napper and Jon Schlemmer designed a new green community centre and library for north London
 
“These are very real projects," says Mike Bartlett of Western's Civil & Environmental Engineering Department noting that the Wonderland Road bridge project is slated to be done within 10 years and the Greenway upgrade and recreation centre/library project much sooner.
 
“The trick about the recreation centre and library project is that it will be a 'green' LEED building," he says. “Half of the students working on it were structural engineers and the other two were environmental engineers." Bartlett says the project is “very hot right now" with a design architect in place who requested the students' project work on the centre for review and consideration.
 
“The city has also asked for the student PowerPoint presentations," he says. “One group's presentation took you on a tour, walking through the building in real time."
 
The yearly design competition is an important part of the fourth year academic program, helping students to develop design talents, design alternatives, site and structure aesthetics, cost estimates, construction strategies and explore durability and maintenance issues.
 
Bartlett says that while much attention is paid to the winning team's spectacular work, the reality is that the presentations by all students were “of a very high quality."
 
“Due to the presentations and materials submitted, the bar keeps getting raised higher year after year," he says.
 
“There were third-year students in the audience at the presentations so hopefully the bar will be raised even higher next year."
 
Bartlett says that Dave Leckie, Director of Roads and Transportation for the City of London told the students that “the presentations were great and that the groups could sell anything to anybody."
 
“There is a strong technical component to the awards but the other part of it is the effectiveness of the students' communication of their technical innovations to a non-technical audience," he says. “Our students are getting very good at that."            

Also from this web page:

About

Hours

Weekdays
8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
(holidays excluded)

Contact

Publisher:
Helen Connell (hconnell@uwo.ca)

Editor:
Jason Winders (newseditor@uwo.ca)

Reporter/Photographer:
Paul Mayne (pmayne@uwo.ca)

Reporter/Photographer:
Heather Travis (htravis2@uwo.ca)

Advertising Coordinator:
Denise Jones (advertise@uwo.ca)

Off-Campus Advertising Sales:
Chris Amyot, Campus Ad (campusad@sympatico.ca)

National Advertising Representative:
Campus Plus

Phone:
519-661-2045

Fax:
519-661-3921

Mail:
Western News, Suite 360
Westminster Hall
The University of Western Ontario, London N6A 3K7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Western provides the best student experience among Canada's leading research-intensive universities.