UA Little Rock Seniors Learn Ins and Outs of Building Design and Construction

A long-standing partnership with industry experts helped prepare a group of graduating UA Little Rock seniors for their future careers in the fields of civil and construction engineering.

During their senior design project for the 2022-23 school year, 20 students from the Civil and Construction Engineering and Architectural and Construction Engineering programs were tasked with providing the structural design, construction cost estimate, and building schedule for four hypothetical building projects spread out across the United States.

“We have our largest senior class ever this year, and we are very proud of the work they’ve done for the last two semesters,” said Anne Turner, assistant professor and coordinator of the Civil and Construction Engineering Program. “We thank our industry partners for all their hard work and efforts with mentoring our seniors in the development of their final projects.”

Each team was tasked with designing a different type of building in a different location. The real-life inspiration for the students’ hypothetical projects was the $40 million expansion of Conway Regional Health System that included the construction of a 42,000-square-foot, three-story medical office. Industry partner Cromwell Architects Engineers designed the project.

The students and their projects include:

·  Dream Team consisting of Echo Cox, Zakary Gould, Chandler Reep, Alyssa Rood, and Sam Swindle – University Research Center in Savannah, Georgia

·  Shear Luck with Annya Grom, Jack Hill, Gerardo Ramirez, John Short, and Andrea Vargas – Police Headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee

·  Always Under Construction with Andrew Brown, Taylor Carter, Junius Mugambi, Jonathan Toups, and Fernando Vllla – Medical Office Building in Juneau, Alaska

·  HATDD with Hesom Garner, Tori Lee, David Mendoza-Lopez, Harlan Pennington, and Dustin Welch – JLM Fusion Research Center in Jackson, Wyoming

Industry sponsors from Cromwell Architects Engineers and CDI Contractors created the design challenge for the seniors. Participating Cromwell members included Mike Callahan, director of structures, and structural engineers Paul Timko and Brittani Mitchell. Daniel Bowen, director of preconstruction, and David Cooan, senior project manager, joined the team from CDI Contractors.

A senior design project is a requirement for accreditation by the ABET, a nonprofit, non-governmental agency that accredits programs in applied and natural science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology. UA Little Rock’s senior design project is unique in that its industry partners from Cromwell Architects Engineers and CDI Contracting have been involved ever since the Civil and Construction Engineering Program was created, showing just how dedicated industry partners are to making sure the students have a successful education.

The students considered multiple factors like wind speed and exposure, seismic activity, frost depth, and snow loads that would affect their building design. Weather, taxes, inflation, and building costs were all factors in the building schedule and construction estimate. The estimated final cost of the projects ranged from $15.1 million to $23.6 million with construction times between 17-20 months.

The students were thrown a few twists and turns in their project, such as what would happen if the client made a request to know the cost of adding a fifth floor to a four-story project. The students came up with alternative bids, and the average price to add a fifth floor to each project wound up at $3.93 million.

“From the project, we developed many new skills,” said senior Andrea Vargas. “We learned how to be accountable, responsible, and professional, and we expanded our technical skills. We also worked on developing our design skills, something that we became more skilled at over time. We thank the faculty members at UA Little Rock who have shaped us into the students we are today.”