Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering

ConE Program Experiences Great Success

By Chuck Jahren, Professor-in-Charge, ConE

Iowa State University’s Construction Engineering (ConE) program is experiencing great success and continues to evolve and improve each year. With more than 300 undergraduate students and nine faculty members, ConE is by far the largest program of its kind in the nation. The next largest program at North Carolina State University has approximately 150 under­graduates.

Students in the Iowa State program are some of the best and brightest ConE students in the country, repeatedly winning many regional and national awards (see page 7). In recent years, Iowa State has added resources to the ConE program by increasing the faculty size more than 50 percent (see chart below) and making several changes to increase the program’s effectiveness. As a result, the program has undertaken several initiatives, including:

• The development of a highly successful learning community for students
• A mock bid letting program where student bids are tendered to the contracting authority and evaluated along with contractor bids. These mock bids are assembled using actual sub and supplier quotations and include both highway and heavy and commercial construction.
• Design-build student term projects
• The addition of separate faculty experts in both mechanical and electrical construction
• A decrease in the student to instructor ratios in labs using donor funds
• A commitment to supporting our highly successful student organizations as measured by competitive awards
• The development of research programs in paperless construction administration, high technology solutions for construction inspection, integrated project delivery (including design-build), urban freeway reconstruction, and process improvement for road construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation.
• The development of joint graduate and senior electives in Highway and Heavy Construction including a GPS Automatic Machine Control class featured in the Engineering News Record.
  

The program also has plans in place for many future initiatives such as:

• Selectively integrating civil engineering activities to leverage resources, and providing students with experience working in multidisciplinary teams
• Adding faculty with expertise in legal aspects of construction
• Developing further coursework in integrated project delivery, including design-build
• Furthering distance education, starting with a construction engineering and management emphasis for a civil engineering master’s degree
• Developing basic research initiatives in alternative project delivery techniques and multi-objective optimization as well as applied research for innovative construction for transportation projects.
  

A new model of faculty responsibilities also has been implemented. The new model recognizes faculty as a team of specialists who work together and excel in their areas of expertise. The program has added lecturers who have considerable industry experience and teach many rigorous and practical courses. Separate experts for both electrical and mechanical construction also have been added, something rarely found in other construction programs. To meet the CCEE faculty, go to our Web site at www.ccee.iastate.edu/who-we-are/directory.html (click on Construction Faculty and Staff).

Currently, Iowa State researchers are concentrating on three main areas: high technology, urban freeway reconstruction and construction process improvement. Some of the projects include studying laser scanning; advanced rapid and non-destructive construction inspection; urban freeway delivery systems, scheduling methods, and paperwork reduction; asphalt and gravel road maintenance and rehabilitation; earthwork construction; and construction administration improvement.

Geo-construction is also another new research area. Because most of the sites that are easy to build on have already been developed, it leaves the more challenging sites. To build on these sites, engineers need to have an intimate understanding of both design and construction. To the department’s knowledge, no other university has a research focus in this area. In order to address these industry needs, our ConE program plans to join forces with our geotechnical division. Watch our spring 2007 CCEEnews to learn more about this new effort.