CM Highlights - Department of Construction Management

CM Highlights
January 2011
Volume 5, Issue 1
CM Cares Leadership Course Begins This Spring
The first Leadership Course
for the CM Cares initiative
begins this semester. The
objective of CM Cares is to
infuse the traits of community service, leadership, team
building, and ethics throughout the culture of the CM
Program through CM-related
community service projects
that allow students to apply
classroom skills in real-world
applications. The Leadership Course will include
guest lectures from industry
leaders on the non-technical
aspects of running a successful business including
such topics as: leadership,
ethics, team building, and
creating company culture.
Students will be challenged
to complete a volunteer
design/construction project
during the semester. Current projects in the works
include: Noah’s Project,
which will assist a young boy
with a form of muscular dystrophy and his family in Ft.
Collins by design evaluation
of a lift to their home’s second floor or an additional
bedroom on the first floor
which is easily accessible for
him; a project for Save Our
Youth to add walls, doors,
hardware, and finishes to the
offices located in Denver;
Alternative Pregnancy Centers needs remodeling work
performed in a bathroom and
meeting room, including design and construction of display boards, cabinets, etc.,
in Denver; and project specifics are being developed
for work with Poudre Valley
School District.
Students who complete the
Leadership Course will serve
as the project leaders of the
community service projects.
They will be tasked with
identifying community service agencies needing volunteers for projects, fundraising
for needed materials, matching student volunteers from
specific construction management classes to the project needs, and mentoring
and organizing volunteers.
In this issue:
Costa Rica Course 2
Another Success
CON267 Guest
2
Speaker Addresses
Resumes
CM Faculty
Presents CSU
Program in DR
2
NAHB Team
Places Sixth
3
MCAA Team Part 3
of Final Four
ABC Auctions
Sweets for
Scholarship
3
Upcoming Events 4
Suncor Donates to Heavy Civil Endowed Chair
In December, Suncor Energy
donated $50,000 to help
fund the Heavy Civil Endowed Chair in the CM department. Suncor’s generous contribution assisted the
CM department with meeting
its goal to have $1.5 million
raised for the Endowed
Chair by December 31,
2010.
committed to achieving excellence in construction education. Our passion to become the highest quality program in the country draws
key strengths from our industry support and engagement with our program. We
value Suncor’s partnership
and commitment to construction education.”
The endowment will provide
a permanent emphasis in
heavy construction management at CSU, creating a dynamic curriculum that will
allow students to focus their
education on the type of construction they prefer. CM
Department Head Dr. Mostafa Khattab said, “We are
Suncor energy is Canada’s
premier integrated energy
company and one of the
largest independent energy
companies in the world.
Founded in 1967, the company began by commercially
developing the Canadian oil
sands in Northern Alberta to
recover the bitumen from the
sand and upgrade it to refinery-ready feedstock and diesel fuel.
Front (L-R): Steve Peterson, Lafarge West, Inc.;
Mostafa Khattab, CM Department Head; Ken
Coulson, Coulson Excavating Company; Norb
Schreiber, Suncor.
Back (L-R): Kim Winger, CAHS Development;
Joe Houtz, CM student.
Page 2
Costa Rica Course Another Success
CM Highlights
On January 3, a group of ten
Construction Management
and Interior Design students
from CSU converged on San
Jose, Costa Rica for CON/
INTD 450, a Travel Abroad
course focused on sustainable building. The course
was a joint offering between
CSU and Universidad Latina
co-taught by Caroline
Clevenger, a CM Assistant
Professor at CSU and
Alejandro Ugarte, a member
of the Architecture Faculty at
the University of Costa Rica
and lecturer at Universidad
Latina.
The ten day course involves
many hours of “classroom”
instruction in a myriad of set-
tings including local elementary schools, a fishpond pavilion, unoccupied restaurants and the beach on the
Guanacaste coast. Coursework promotes a personal
and professional commitment to sustainability as it
relates to buildings in a variety of climates. Students
worked in groups to create
sustainable mission statements, community master
plans and applied sustainable design and construction
solutions on the building level. According to Jeff Wilkes,
a masters student in construction management, "The
trip was valuable for me because we got to see many of
the sustainable concepts
discussed in class applied
to practical projects in an
environment where implementing sustainability can
have a significant and positive impact." The course also
included visits to local settings such as a working local
farm, an eco-tourist tourist
hotel, the Monte Verde Natural Reserve and, for some
students, an outing to a sustainable, organic coffee plantation.
The Department of Construction Management looks
forward to being able to offer
such an exceptional, interdisciplinary, international
experience next year.
CON267 Guest Speaker Addresses Resumes
Denny Dahl, Director of Human Resources at PCL Construction Enterprises, Inc.,
visited the Construction
Management Pre-Internship
class on Thursday, January
27 to discuss resumes, cover letters and references
when searching for jobs and
internships. Dahl’s visit al-
lowed students the opportunity to ask a representative
of a construction company
questions about what is
sought when evaluating potential candidates for employment. The students left
the discussion with beneficial
ideas for improving their credentials before beginning
their job search.
If interested in being
a guest speaker or
volunteer in the CM
department, please
visit the CM website:
www.cm.cahs.colostate.edu.
CM Faculty Presents CSU’s Program In Dominican Republic
CM Associate Professor Bolivar Senior was invited to
give a presentation at the
Insituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (Intec) in the
Dominican Republic on January 11. The talk focused on
the history of the construction management program at
Colorado State University.
Intec has the highest ranked
engineering program in the
Dominican Republic and is
exploring the viability of a
four-year undergraduate program in construction management. The institute is
also introducing lean construction concepts to the
construction industry of the
country.
Senior was invited by Intec’s
president’s office and hosted
by the Civil Engineering department. The presentation,
he said, “exceeded its
scheduled duration of one
hour by almost an additional
hour due to the many questions from students almost
entirely about Lean Construction.” As a result of the
visit, Senior is now a member of Intec’s Task Force on
Lean Construction and its
contact with the Colorado
chapter of the Lean Construction Institute.
Page 3
NAHB Team Places Sixth at National Competition
The CM department sent a
team of students to the National Association of Home
Builders (NAHB) Residential
Construction Management
Competition (RCMC) in Orlando, FL January 12-15.
Oswaldo Cantor, Matthew
Collett, Ryan Feldman, Ryan
Mondragon, Bryan Roling
and Brandon Schelling competed as a team against 35
other teams from other institutions across the country
and brought home a sixthplace finish.
Each year, 30-40 teams
compete in the RCMC. The
competition allows construction management students to
apply skills acquired in the
classroom to real construction projects.
NAHB Team (L-R): Ben Bigelow (coach),
Brandon Schelling, Matt Collet, Brian
Roling, Ryan Feldman, Oswaldo Cantor,
Ryan Mondragon.
MCAA Team Part Of Final Four
The CM Department’s Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA)
student team has placed into
the Final Four of the MCAA
2010-2011 Student Chapter
Competition. The team, consisting of Mark Boland, Andrew Carter, Jordan Heberlein, Tammer Khattab, Allie
Parker and AJ Sonnenberg,
competed against MCAA
student chapter teams from
across the country for this
exceptional honor.
The MCAA team submitted a
proposal based on an actual
project for which competitive
bids were solicited. The proposals were evaluated
based on the overall quality
of the written proposal
(20%), project management
and organization (25%), feasibility of construction and
program schedules (20%),
quality of conceptual design
(15%), and accuracy/
feasibility of conceptual
costs (20%). The four teams
with the highest total scores
made it to the Final Four.
The next stage of the competition is for the Final Four
to present their project proposals at the MCAA Annual
Convention in Maui, HI. The
CM Department is proud to
wish its team good luck!
ABC Student Chapter Auctions Sweets for Scholarship
On Thursday, January 20,
the Associated Builders and
Contractors (ABC) student
club in the CM Department
held a dessert auction to
raise funds for an endowed
scholarship for CM students.
The auction took place in
Denver and 34 companies
attended. ABC raised
$8,770 of the $25,000 needed to fund the endowment.
Another auction will take
place around this time next
year. Stay tuned to future
CM Highlights editions for
details!
ABC Team (L-R): Ryan Emery, Max Finster,
Jordan Wilmes, Jason Summers.
CM Highlights
This year’s project involved
the construction of a model
home complex with administrative offices for a residen-
tial builder in North Carolina.
The premise involved a Regional Vice President of the
builder and his/her staff requesting permission from the
Senior Management to purchase the land and build the
complex. Teams needed to
determine the feasibility of
the location and the final
presentation must include
site planning, permit procurement, scheduling, construction budget, staffing,
sales prices for the three
models, projected profit analysis, cash flow analysis,
sales projections and creating a marketing program.
Upcoming Events
Nine teams from the CM department
are travelling to the ASC Regions 6 &
7 Student Competition in Sparks,
NV February 16-19. CM’s first National Electrical Contractors Association
(NECA) team will be participating in
the Electrical Competition.
The MCAA team will compete as one
of the Final Four at the MCAA Annual
Convention in Maui, HI March 6-10.
The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) team will be competing at
the 2011 ABC National Conference in
San Antonio, TX this April.
Save the Date!
The Spring 2011 PADB meeting will
take place Thursday, March 31, 2011
in the Preconstruction Center.
Details will be sent soon!
Department of Construction Management
Colorado State University
1584 Campus Delivery
Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1584
Phone: 970-491-7353
Fax: 970-491-2473
www.cm.cahs.colostate.edu
Please submit your comments or stories to:
Natalya Weisgerber
Natalya.Weisgerber@colostate.edu