Course Reflection – Kate Flint - Group D

I will be working for a construction company after graduation so I wanted to gain a better understanding of BIM and what the future of intelligent building looks like. While on co-op in the facilities/project management department at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, I received an introduction to BIM. I was involved in some coordination meetings and was shown how vital new technologies are to the construction process.

I would recommend this course to anyone who plans to work in construction or building design after graduation. While interviewing for potential jobs I was especially interested in the growing BIM or Virtual Building departments in many construction companies. The curse is also obviously geared towards older undergrad/grad students because we were not tested on ever-single lecture and attendance was not taken. We became responsible for our own education, and would get as much out of the class as we put into it. This class was in a very different format from most of my other Drexel courses but I really enjoyed it.

My favorite portions of this course were the supplemental videos about robotics and the lectures from Whiting-Turner, the female Drexel alum who had a large role involving BIM at an engineering firm, and the man who had started his own engineering/consulting business.

I would not consider myself a huge robotics nerd, which was my least favorite part of freshman design. However, when applied to construction I was much more interested. I enjoyed the Whiting-Turner lecture because it was the closest to what I would be doing next year. It was also interesting to have the perspective of a recent Drexel grad and a more seasoned project manager present and answer questions.

I really liked the woman working in BIM because she didn’t preach why “women in tech” is so important. She showed us through her successful accomplishments and passion. As a female in the construction industry I think it is very important for more successful women to be recognized. I think part of the problem why more women are not in top executive roles is because there are not many female role models in the industry to set the example.  

The engineer who started his own company was very passionate and knowledgeable which was infectious. I wanted to just hear every piece of advice he had about business and engineering. By the end of all these lectures I was so inspired to learn more and excited to start working in this industry. 

I didn’t feel the need to attend each class because attendance was being taken. I attended because I was excited to see who the next guest lecturer would be or which cool new video we would watch and discuss. The format of the course required me to analyze new technologies we learned about weekly and find out how or if these technologies could help the industry.

The only thing I would change would be the last few lectures, maybe weeks 8 or 9. Personally, I didn’t find them as interesting, but that may be because I didn’t find the topics as applicable to my personal interests. How the internet works is cool, and definitely something I have wondered about, but I would have rather learned more about how specific BIM technologies work. I also was not a big fan of the database assignment. I think it would have been better if we were given actual sensor/other data from a building and had to create a database for it.

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