University of Wisconsin–Madison

What value does a real-world project bring to students?

Civil engineering students receive an excellent academic education on the methods used to calculate solutions to various technical problems. However, most courses focus on a single topic, like transportation design, hydrology, structural design and so forth. To become functioning practitioners, students must understand how and when various technical disciplines interact to guide project success. Being assigned to real-world projects in multidisciplinary teams is a hands-on lesson on how this occurs.

Real-world projects also present the critical non-technical issues associated with a successful project. The projects include interaction with the owner (in our program usually the actual owner), public entities, non-technical individuals, and others that all interact and must be considered when completing a project. They learn first-hand that often the non-technical project constraints drive the selection of project features.  Engineers present alternatives, while owners decide.

How do you decide what projects to work on?

UW–Madison Civil and Environmental Engineering adjunct professors, who are mainly practicing licensed engineers or architects, develop a list of potential projects for each semester. Many of these projects are developed during meetings with non-university sources, such as the Clean Lakes Alliance, which was the origin of this project. Other sources include village, city, county, or state engineering staff, or just interesting issues described in a local newspaper.

Each project is evaluated for its conformance to course and ABET requirements, including needing input from at least four different technical disciplines for completion and to be appropriate for the preparation of construction documents at the end of the semester.

Final project selection is made with a focus on projects that provide as wide a range of technical topics as possible for the class as a whole, while also being suitable for the number of students enrolled that semester.

How did this project prepare students for professional practice?

Each project team works through the various stages of a real project on the abbreviated timescale provided by the semester. This includes preparing a proposal, presenting an interview, preparing and presenting a preliminary engineering report, development of construction drawings, construction contracts and technical specifications, and a final presentation.

Project management is introduced. Each team has a project manager that keeps the team organized and prepares a weekly project management report. Each team member keeps a timesheet that is used by the project manager to determine if too little or too much time is being expended by the team members. The class has guidelines on how many hours should be expended each week. The project manager and each team member compare the incremental effort expended to progress made in completing the project.  

The students have the opportunity to work directly with practitioners. In addition to some of the points raised previously, students are guided through each of the project phases by professional engineers involved in the class. This group includes the course instructors, team mentors (usually two per team), guest speakers, some of the clients, and presentation judges. As a result, a class of 60 students may interact with 30 or 40 professionals during a semester long course.  

What advice do you have for other programs wanting to add similar collaborative projects to their curriculum?

One of the most important points is to involve individuals that understand and have access to these projects. Some important points to consider include:

What did you like best about participating in this project?

My favorite part about this capstone project was getting the opportunity to collaborate with classmates with different backgrounds. My team involved civil engineers with structural, transportation, environmental, construction, and geotechnical engineering interests. I enjoyed developing ideas with them and the professional engineers assigned to the team. The project was unique in the sense that we had creative liberty to fulfill the design details, which made the collaborative effort critical to the final design.

What did you learn?

Throughout the project, I learned more about the development of a project, from its conceptualization, to drafting ideas, presenting them to a client, and getting feedback, all leading to a final design. I enjoyed getting to see the full picture of a project rather than a small portion of it. As the geotechnical engineer for the project, I learned where geotechnical engineering fits in the timescale of a project and more about how the calculations I learned in the past can direct a project. In addition, I had the opportunity to act as project manager for the team, which led me to learn how to balance keeping others on schedule in addition to myself. This opportunity improved my communication and time management skills.

How did the participation of professional engineers improve the experience?

Throughout the project we had the opportunity to work closely with two professional engineers and one professional architect as we developed plans for the park. Due to their involvement, we had the opportunity to learn about projects they had been involved in at their respective companies and professional tips they had for us. Throughout the project, the engineers were able to lend insights from their vast knowledge to our multi-faceted engineering project.

What do you think the engineers learned from working with students on this project?

One thing I believe the engineers learned from working with our team was how an issue can be solved in many different ways and that each of those ways are important to consider when developing a project. I think that the most valuable thing that could be gained from the experience was perspective, specifically through our unique focuses and previous experiences. I believe that we helped develop additional thought processes that allow for more creative problem solving.

Why did you get involved with the project?

I have a long history with the planning and engineering of this park beginning with the city of Madison’s downtown planning that took place in 2004–12. My firm’s office was in a building on Lake Monona next to the park. After I retired from private consulting and became an adjunct professor with UW–Madison Civil and Environmental Engineering program, I helped lead pro-bono design workshops for the park from 2014 to 2020. Drawing on this background knowledge of the site and a strong working relationship with the client (Clean Lakes Alliance), city parks, and engineering staff, I was able to work with the course instructor to prepare an appropriate capstone design course RFP for this interesting and challenging urban waterfront revitalization effort in Madison, Wisconsin.

How did you assist the students in the project?

I served as a mentor to the student team throughout the planning and engineering process for the project. I recruited and worked collaboratively with my professional colleague Larry Matel, who served remotely as a transportation engineering co–mentor from his home in Boulder, Colorado, and with my former business partner Ed Freer as an urban design co-mentor. I also tutored the student water resources engineer on coastal engineering design issues and provided the student structural engineer with examples of coastal engineering structures located on local lakes.

What did you learn from working with the students?

I was very impressed with how the students shared their ideas and design approaches with each other and the co-mentors. They worked well together as a team to accomplish the client’s goals, especially how to improve water quality, park sustainability, and access to the downtown lakefront.

What did you want students to learn from working with you?

I worked closely with the other two co-mentors to demonstrate for the student team how design professionals with different backgrounds and skills can work well together to produce an excellent end product. It was also important that the students learned how to generate three separate and distinct viable alternatives and then work with the client to arrive at a preferred consensus plan with public input at key milestones in the planning and design process.