Introduction - Aaron Goldberg

Hello everyone.  My name is Aaron Goldberg, and I am a senior undergraduate student here at Drexel pursuing a dual major in Architectural Engineering in the mechanical concentration and Civil Engineering with a minor in Business Administration.  I grew up in Cherry Hill, NJ, which is just a 15 minute drive east of Philadelphia.

Although called Cherry Hill, it is the flattest town you will ever visit.  Being so close to Philadelphia my entire life, I was able to experience the city life and the environment at Drexel slowly over the course of my childhood.  It also lets me go home using a 20 minute taxi ride, which is super convenient.

While at Drexel, I completed 3 co-ops.  My first was at a small engineering firm called "Allen-Sherman-Hoff", although I believe they are known as a subset of a much larger company now called "Babcock and Wilcox".  There I learned a lot of structural steel detailing and the development of shop drawings for construction projects in industrial settings.  For my second co-op, I worked for L. F. Driscoll on the second Comcast Tower.  My office was across the street from the site, and I was on-site almost everyday of that internship.  This experience was invaluable, and really helped me make some relationships in the construction industry that I still see today on other sites.  I did learn from this job, though, that I did not want to work strictly on a construction site, and I wanted just a little bit more office work, leading me to consulting engineering.  My third co-op was at a company called Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, a national consulting engineering company with an office here in Philadelphia.  I greatly enjoyed my time here, and I decided to continue working for this company part time as I complete my undergraduate career, and have since accepted a job offer for after my graduation in June 2019.  Going forward, I have submitted graduate school applications for a Master's Degree, which I am currently waiting to hear if I have been accepted or not.  I plan to work full time while getting my Master's Degree, which is the reason for me taking this course now, to get ahead.

In my free time, I like to cook, play video games, and travel.  Saying that I like to do these activities is the truth, although like many Drexel students, I have not had the time recently to do them.

Me (left) and my sister (right) at a church in Italy

I think an "intelligent building" has multiple definitions depending on the context in which it is used.  During construction, it is common to say that they are using "intelligent building practices", which include various tools (robots), construction methods (sequencing), and communication (BIM).  Another example can be during the building's operation which can utilize touch screen panels for temperature control, real-time occupancy loading, and pollutants, like CO2, monitoring.  There are countless more examples of what I consider to be an "intelligent buildings", and as new technologies develop, new techniques will become available, making buildings even more "intelligent".