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CE Club January 2016 Update

Transportation Engineers from AECOM

Janet Yeow and Ismarie Torres from the transportation group at AECOM visited the CE Club at Woodrow Wilson High School for the second year in a row. They asked the students to share their thoughts on why transportation engineers are needed in today’s society to start off the presentation. Many students were aware that engineers are needed to get people where they want to go safely and efficiently. To hammer this point home, Janet showed the students highway congestion projections for the next 20-30 years. Ismarie also showed the students what some of the day-to-day tasks of a transportation engineer are, including: geometric design of horizontal and vertical curves, superelevations on roadways and railways, vertical clearance checks at bridges, stopping sight distance on vertical curves, and construction traffic control.

Janet and Ismarie then shared how computers play a role in all of these design tasks. The students in Mr. Carver’s class were quite familiar with Revit by had never used AutoCAD before. To help introduce the students to AutoCAD, Janet and Ismarie led the students through a CAD activity on their classroom computers using a real-world job that they are currently working on at AECOM. Students were given a CAD file for the Herbert Street extension to Commerce Street in the Trinity Groves neighborhood of Dallas and asked to help layout the linework using CAD commands. Students were also asked to consider things such as whether it would be better to build a bridge or dig a tunnel for Herbert Street since the extension would cross a railroad track. Overall, the students loved the challenge of a new computer program and enjoyed getting to work on a real-world project that they will one day see come to fruition! Additional photos from AECOM’s visit can be found here.