THIRD YEAR INTEGRATED DESIGN PROJECT FOR THIRD YEAR CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Abstract

There is a lack of courses for design education in civil engineering curriculum except in fourth year at many Canadian Universities. An innovative approach introduced and implemented by the author to promote design education at the third year using a design competition at the University of Calgary was very successful. Student learned design concepts, applied them in the third year using a real project, integrated several civil engineering deliverables in one project without doing them in a separate course, and gained experience to get ready for their final year design course through this design competition. The eight courses included in the competition comprise all civil engineering aspects including structural, geotechnical, transportation, environmental, construction, material, and project management. The lessons learned by implementing the competition for 2 years, the author suggests a new idea to introduce a third year design project for civil engineering students. The paper discusses the purpose, structure, student participation, deliverables of the new idea.