Construction Division News

It feels like mere weeks since our Construction Division began planning for the Reno Conference. It is as if we blinked, and here we are! The reality is much more involved than that, of course - a lot of hard work has been done by several division members to get us to this point. We have a great lineup of presentations this year thanks to the outstanding efforts of Dr. Laura Ikuma, assistant professor at Louisiana State University, and Mr. George Gardner, state partnering coordinator at the Virginia Department of Transportation. Laura has done us proud by chairing the IERC (Research) track and assembling a great lineup of construction research papers in three sessions. The sessions are: Lean Construction, Ergonomics and Safety in Construction, and Quality and Productivity in Construction. Our IERC program has been growing consistently each year, which is a positive sign for the future of IE involvement in construction as well as for the division. The sessions start at 12:55 p.m. on Monday, May 23 and continue through Tuesday, May 24. More from the president

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Vote to approve division bylaws

The Division leadership has updated the division bylaws. We now need the membership approval of these bylaws.

Please participate in the voting to approve the bylaws. Vote now

You will need your IIE member number to complete this form. If you're not sure what your member number is, we can email it to you.

Vote closes May 31.

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Town Hall Meeting, Monday, May 23

IIE Annual Conference and Expo

May 21-25

Grand Sierra Resort Hotel

Reno, Nev.

Everyone is invited to the Town Hall meeting at 5:15 p.m. on Monday, May 23, especially anyone who may be interested in becoming active in the division, as well as in improving the construction process.

The following topics will be discussed:

1.Introductions

2.Presentation of the winner of the Best Student Paper Award

3.Division bylaws (to be ratified)

4.Discussion of how IEs can get involved in lean construction

5.Review of the Mission Statement

6.Discussion on Board positions to be filled

7.Future direction

The construction industry has much room for improvement; studies by the Construction Industry Institute (CII) have shown that rework may consume as much as 10 percent of project cost. Collectively, various wastes of resources account for as much as 30 percent of project costs. In an industry valued at more than $1 trillion dollars per year in the United States and $4 trillion dollars worldwide, there is a golden opportunity for IEs to step forward and participate in it.The emergence of lean construction is especially significant as it draws on the IE-based principles that are the foundation for lean processes. Non-IEs are leading the charge in lean construction.We need to get on board to help them, or get left behind!

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Membership chair's message

By George P. Gardner, state partnering coordinator, Virginia Department of Transportation

Now that we are well into the spring season, we hope everyone is having a great year. I know the weather is finally starting to turn out better for most of us. This month we are featuring an article from Bobby Smyth. Also, we are including information about the upcoming Annual Conference in Reno, Nev.

We have an exciting lineup of presentations from our Construction Division membership including:

Peter Furst
Brock Husby
Matt Horvat
Jan Evans
Student Paper Competion winner

We hope you can make the conference this year and if you are going, please let us know so that we can make sure networking take place. As always, we would love to hear from you. Please contact us if you wish to be an active participant of our growing division.

Sincerely,

George

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Student Best Paper Competition for 2010-2011

Thanks to the generosity of the ConAm Group of Companies, we are pleased to present the winning paper for the Student Best Construction. The papers submitted demonstrate or describe the use of IE-based techniques such as lean construction methods, quality management, green technology/ sustainable construction, alternative materials, simulation, optimization, automation, ergonomics, etc. in the construction environment.

This year's winner is William Croll, a senior at the University of Southern California. William's paper is titled "Improving Construction Quality by Combining Three-Dimensional Models and Visual Recognition Software."

The paper is included in the Construction Division's conference track and presented by its student author to highlight the achievements and contributions of the next generation of engineers.

The ConAm Group is a builder and developer of residential projects throughout the United States, and has sponsored this competition for the past seven years.We thank Dan Epstein, chairman of the ConAm Group of Companies, for making this possible.

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Message from our Student Liaison, Bobby Smyth

Hello friends,

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to change the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." - E.B. White

At a recent banquet, the associate dean of our college used this quotation and wished us all a lifetime of difficulty planning our day. I found his talk to be inspirational in many ways because as college students we seem to have this burning desire to change the world. At times we must slow down, and stop and smell the roses. This excitement and enthusiasm about our newfound knowledge and talents could sell for an expensive price if we could bottle it up and harness it.

As up and coming engineers we must find our balance between changing the world and enjoying the day. I believe that involvement in IIE and other professional organizations gives us a glimpse of what success looks like in the biographies of our leaders and the experience of our professional members. Conferences and competitions give us a taste of the talent that exists and the bar that has been set by those who came before us. More from Bobby

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Wanted: Construction articles for Industrial Engineer magazine

The Construction Division invites members to submit articles on construction topics through our publications committee for publication in the monthly

Industrial Engineer magazine. We would like to see IE-related articles about construction included in the Industrial Engineer magazine on a regular basis, and we are starting by determining which members are interested, and the topics that they would like to write about. At this point, we would just like to see a brief outline of the topic(s) that you wish to write about. Following that we plan to provide you with the detailed publication requirements, such as the format and length to be observed for each article. By working together, we can organize our articles in a sequence that will be most interesting and informative for our readers. Please contact our newsletter editor, Paula Eick.

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May 2011