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CE Club June 2018 Update

CE Club Field Trip with L.A. Fuess, ASCE Dallas, and Hilti

Continuing with the annual tradition, the ASCE Dallas Younger Members hosted the Woodrow Wilson CE Club on an all-day field trip on Monday, May 14^th. Ten of the highest performing students from the Civil Engineering and Architecture Design classes at WWHS participated in the field trip along with their teacher, Mr. Brandon Carver.

The day started off on the construction site of Ventana by Buckner, a project on which L.A. Fuess Partners served as the structural engineering consultant. Jonathan Brower and Brian Schnittker of L.A. Fuess walked the students through the job site with the help of a couple of contractors from Whiting-Turner. The group was also joined on this site visit with ASCE President-Elect Robin Kemper and ASCE Texas Section Executive Director Lindsay O’Leary who were both in town for a series of events in DFW scheduled as part of Infrastructure Week 2018. Students were shown the pan-joist construction on the first two garage levels of the building and then taken up to the higher levels that were designed as two-way, flat-plate PT slabs. Jonathan and Brian showed the students the ins and outs of post-tensioned construction while also answering all the great questions the students asked about all the construction going on around them.

From there, the students traveled up north to the ASCE Dallas Branch Luncheon. The students were treated just like civil engineering professionals and were given name tags and special reserved seating close to the front of the room with some ASCE Dallas Younger Members. At the luncheon, they got to watch the installment of new Life Members and listen to a great presentation on the state of the DFW Airport infrastructure by Mr. Khaled Naja.

Finally, the students traveled to the Hilti Research and Development Facility in Irving to meet up with Alexis Clark of Hilti and the Fort Worth Branch. They were taken on a tour of the testing facilities with Hilti Engineer Frank McMahon who introduced the students to the types and roles of engineers working at Hilti along with some current projects. Frank showed the students the testing facilities where they got to see direct fastening for steel-to-steel connections, concrete anchor testing, and fire stop testing with a burn room simulation! Alexis also took the students through the Customer Experience Center to check out drills, anchors, and other Hilti tools in person. At the end of the tour, they met the manager of the Fire Protection Engineering group, Foster Cryer, who discussed the need for fire protection systems and the testing that goes into them.

Additional photos from the students’ all-day field trip can be found online here, here, and here.