Course Reflection

My expectations  for this course were to learn about the concepts behind BIM and some of the emerging technologies in the industry. Furthermore, I was hoping to gain a better understanding of how buildings are monitored over their useful life. I certainly feel that all of my expectations were met at some point in the short ten weeks we had to discuss intelligent buildings. In fact, in many ways, my expectations were exceeded in this course if only by the quality of discussion and personal interest in the subject matter. As David Morrison reflects, the topic of “Intelligent Buildings” is an exciting one, especially for architectural engineers such as myself.

What felt like the course introduction, in the first two weeks, served to whet my appetite for the lectures to follow. I found the lectures given by representatives of Revit and Bentley to be particularly interesting, and useful as an overview of what these two modeling programs are about. Learning that databases are responsible for the operation of these programs made me more willing to investigate database design as we were assigned. Not only was I willing to learn, I found our discussion of databases to be extremely intuitive and edifying, especially having no previous knowledge about databases. I agree with John Scanlon that the overall format of this course is clear and informative, even for the most basic level of understanding. I further agree with Elda Cifligu that I got out of this course what I put in.

That being said, my only difference of opinion with the format of this course is the relative time spent on databases. I felt that the initial introduction to databases and the following tutorial, in conjunction with the excellent online tutorials, was more than sufficient to develop a basic understanding of databases. I would have preferred to see the second week dedicated to databases spent on further development of our term projects, or some other aspect of intelligent building (sensor use comes to mind). Other than this, I felt the work assigned was fair in its magnitude and its timing. I appreciated the checkpoints on our term project and the fact that it was due a week before the madness of Week 10 set in.

In general, the tenor of this course turned out to be far more interesting than I expected. By maintaining an overview of the topics we explored, and just enough technical detail to get our feet wet, I felt the course remained fresh and exciting for the majority of the time. I’ve always enjoyed the format of the courses conducted by Professor Mitchell, but I found the content of this one to be particularly interesting and useful. It would have been futile to attempt to teach an in depth course on all the topics covered in this class, and there are plenty of technical courses worked into my schedule already. This course was a refreshing break from the technicality of my other courses, and an eye-opening introduction to larger (arguably more important) concepts that I will be facing in my future as an engineer. In short, I felt the level of detail in this course was perfect, and the content useful for focusing my attention on relevant issues in the engineering world today.