Alpha Design, Inc. (ADI) isn’t a common name in the engineering industry. But that’s OK—it’s not supposed to be. ADI is a student-created mock company formed by a group of eight civil and construction engineering students at Iowa State for Integrated Design-Build Capstone (CE 485/ConE 487). As the company evolved, its creators faced several challenges; none of which were great enough to hinder their eventual success.
The capstone course is designed to bring together both civil and construction engineering students to utilize skills and knowledge acquired over their undergraduate careers.
“Teams are given a real government design-build request for proposal (RFP) to read and review. I select a new project every semester—one that has been recently awarded by the government,” explains course instructor Beth Hartmann. This semester was a Navy project administered by Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Mid-Atlantic.
The purpose of the project was to design and construct a new First Naval Division Headquarters Facility (1NCD) that would consolidate 151 personnel from several departments of the Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek in Norfolk, Virginia. The project’s requirements included complying with Department of Defense Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection (AT/FP) requirements and the Master Plan for Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, as well as following Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards.
For the course, each team created a conceptual design of the facility and site, a 60-page formal proposal, a conceptual cost estimate, and a schedule for construction of their site along with demolition of the old site.The teams then presented their project in an oral presentation similar to the procedures of presenting a design-build proposal to a client.
This year, of the 11 teams, one stood out more than others: ADI.
The team started out with a 1,300-page RFP, just as all the other groups did. “The RFP specified all the client’s needs: different types of rooms, certain equipment, provisions for the site, and certain codes to follow,” says Andrew Barone, senior in civil engineering. It was the student’s responsibility to analyze the RFP and create a design that incorporated each specification.
Given the enormity of the project, groups were encouraged to split the workload into separate disciplines: architecture, demolition, electrical engineering, foundations, hydrology, LEED standards, mechanical engineering, structural design, and transportation.
Within ADI, each student explained to the group why he or she would be best qualified to lead a certain discipline. Breaking up the project allowed team members to work on segments independently and without the restraints of others’ schedules.
“At first,we each did most of the design work separately with a little bit of collaboration in terms of fitting everyone’s pieces together,” says Colin Schroeder, senior in civil engineering. “As the semester went on, we started to work more closely as a team to develop our presentation and proposal.”
Even with dividing tasks, there was a great deal of collaboration. Especially within Barone’s role as architect.
The architect developed a rough design for the floor plans. These plans gave constructing engineering seniors Alex Wright, in the mechanical engineering role, and Josh McNab, in the electrical engineering role, an idea of how big the rooms would be and the space needed to provide for things such as HVAC systems and lighting. Barone admitted that this portion of his duties was very complicated, an issue that may not have arose if the project wasn’t designed for the course.
“In the original RFP, the Navy actually provides schematic floor plans to all possible bidders, but for our project they didn’t give us those,” Barone explains.“Colin Schroeder and I spent many agonizing hours trying to figure out how to put this jigsaw puzzle of rooms together based on the RFP’s description of every type of room and where each was supposed to be located in relation to the other rooms or building itself.”
Schroeder, senior in civil engineering, noted they eventually found the correct organization for the floor plan, something a few of the groups didn’t quite manage.
The architect also had to work closely with the foundations and structural team members, led by Chunhui Song and Mati Ayana, also seniors in civil engineering. Barone says he focused on creating a building that would easily integrate aspects of their designs.
On a wider scale, Barone had to keep in mind how the building would fit into the environment and onto the site. For this, he worked most closely with Lauren Nitchals, a senior in civil engineering who was in charge of transportation, as well as designing the site layout. Nitchals often worked with Schroeder, who was in charge of hydrology, to develop the grade of the site so that it would drain properly.
“Putting a parking lot and building onto a site that used to be grassland requires you to develop a system based on several rules and specifications to deal with excessive rain water so that it won’t ruin the environment or cause floods,” explains Schroeder.
Nitchals says one of the biggest challenges within the transportation discipline was following specifications for AT/FP. Because the site is a military-run operation, the group had to use preventive measures to keep terrorism at bay such as keeping the building away from all publicly used roads.
“When designing the site’s landscape, I had to consider landscaping that wouldn’t conceal people or objects,” explains Nitchals. “It was something I had never even considered before or had to work with, so it was pretty interesting.”
The most overwhelming guidelines the team had to follow were LEED standards. LEED designs are strategies that ensure that a structure is designed and built with the goals of achieving high performance in sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.
To meet these standards, ADI included energy efficient windows, recycled materials in the building, and using native plants within the landscape. Brendon Reiff, senior in construction engineering, was responsible for monitoring the LEED requirements as well as assembling the demolition plans for the old building.
In the end, the team came up with a hypothetical timeline of events for their project: construction of the new building by August 2012, and demolition of the old by November 2013.
Even though the students’ design will not actually be executed, the process gave each team a first-hand look at design-build projects—a unique and valuable experience the students say they will carry with them as they enter industry.