Introduction and Intelligent Building Definition

I'm Christian Tait, I'm a 4th year BS/MS Architectural/Civil Engineering student (structural concentration). I'm from South Jersey, Erial, NJ to be more specific; it's a very small town located in Gloucester Township about 45 minutes drive from Drexel. I moved to Erial just before 8th grade after living in Marlton, NJ for 7 years, and Maple Shade, NJ in the years prior to moving to Marlton. I've lived in New Jersey's suburbs and the shadow of Philadelphia my entire life, and there was always something missing; everything was too spread out, buildings and landscapes were repetitive and not particularly interesting. This is what really helped to spur my interest in buildings and was a major factor in why I chose to come to Drexel over Penn State.

I've had 2 co-ops so far, the first being at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) working with the  Division of Aviation (DOA) which oversees operation of PHL and Philadelphia Northeast (PNE) airports. While there I was monitoring the contractors and daily progress on projects and providing daily reports of activity to project managers. My time at PHL led into my second co-op at Johnson, Mirmiran & Thompson (JMT) where I went on to work with their aviation design team updating plans and providing drafting support for projects at commercial airports in the region and naval airbases in New Jersey and Virginia.

I'm very active in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI); I'm the President of the Drexel AEI chapter, and am currently the Environmental and Water Resources (EWRI) / Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) Chairman for our ASCE chapter and am currently working to get more environmental engineers involved in ASCE events and in the long term grow EWRI and SEI into independent chapters akin to the Drexel AEI chapter.

Intelligent Building Definition:

A building outfitted with various types of sensors integrated into its systems to provide real-time feedback about multiple performance parameters to building managers and combine external information (weather data, air quality, etc.), set performance requirements and real-time operating conditions to create optimal balances between Energy performance, operating costs, and occupant comfort, and specific building use built in such a way as to minimize environmental impact, project schedule and cost.