Articles

CE Club Update - July 2015

L.A. Fuess Partners and LEGO Construction Administration

Jonathan Brower of L.A. Fuess Partners, who also serves as one of the ASCE Dallas Education Co-Chairs, finally had the opportunity to present to the students at Woodrow Wilson High School after simply organizing and overseeing the club meetings for the school year. Jonathan shared how his job as a structural engineer not only involves design using math and physics but also large amounts of time on coordination and administrative duties with architects and contractors. All of this communication has to be done in a formal and professional manner while dealing with others that are just as busy with other concerns, priorities, and projects.

To help illustrate this challenge, the students were given different packets of pictures of LEGO buildings made out of a variety of LEGO blocks of different colors and sizes. The LEGO blocks to each building were given to one of the other groups in the room. Each team of students had to then figure out the most efficient way to communicate how to build their LEGO building using only pencil and paper. Each team was responsible for producing a set of design drawings for a building as well as constructing a LEGO building off of the design drawings from another team. The teams could ask questions back and forth with the other design or construction teams they were working with, but everything had to be communicated “officially” on paper (meaning no talking allowed).

Students gained a special appreciation for the coordination and multitasking that being an engineer requires as they began to receive construction documents for building a LEGO structure at the same time that they were receiving questions and RFIs from the team that had their construction documents. Additional pictures from the LEGO construction activity can be found online here.