Reflection

Intelligent Buildings was a course in which I could explore the future of my chosen profession. I enjoyed learning about problems I will be faced with in the future and how professionals and researchers are already working on solutions to said problems. Using technology to solve current issues also gives rise to other difficulties. Through this course, I’ve been taught about the responsibilities I have as a prospective engineer to solve these new problems because of their impacts on society and my profession.

Additionally, this course allowed me to explore some of my weaknesses and work on them. For example, I knew about Revit families before this course, but I’ve never made my own furniture family. I also got to work with databases which was something I wasn’t familiar with. I’m hoping I can use them in the future professionally, although right now, I don’t know where they would fit in. I was also happy to use Revit because it is one of my strengths and I like being able to improve on my current skillset. I was also able to practice my writing skills since we were able to get feedback from the professor on our assignments.

I took this course because I was interested in sensor technology and I believed I would be afforded the opportunity to explore sensors. For my final project I researched CO2 sensors in depth as I believed them to be a viable solution to a serious problem facing the building systems industry. After conducting research, writing a paper, and creating a presentation, I still believe that CO2 sensors are the solution for supplying air on demand. I think my paper and presentation are interesting to read and do a good job at explaining the current status of CO2 sensor technology and their use in everyday applications.

This course touched a lot upon things I have learned in other classes and my Co-Ops. I think a lot of the topics gone over in the class will help me professionally and add to my abilities as an engineer. It also helps to hear about things other students are working on so that we can learn from them as well. Instead of just one teacher we get multiple! I’m looking forward to seeing the presentations in class so I can learn more about some of the topics we have gone over in class and possibly some new topics.

In conclusion, this course is beneficial to people who are new to building systems because a lot of the information presented in the class is common knowledge to people who have been employed by firms who work on buildings over their co-ops. I believe that the project was well geared toward a wide audience because it gave students the opportunity to research something they cared about. All in all, I think the course was beneficial to most students and I think we all took away some important lessons. I feel better prepared for my future in the industry and it was exciting to learn about emerging technology.

Comments:

Robert Borelli: I agree that Professor Mitchell’s videos helped a lot with the assignments. I think that if he hadn’t posted them, I would have had a much more difficult time completing the assignments. Particularly the database assignment. I had a lot of difficulty with that assignment.

Hanyan Chen: I think you have a point with gearing the class more towards digital buildings students. However, I think this class could also be used for students beginning in architectural engineering since it explains and goes over a lot of topics students will encounter on their co-ops.

Laney Fries: I think your “what could happen” comment was spot on. I think that we could have narrowed the topics down to “what is currently happening” instead. We went over a lot of technologies that are arising but not what problems they will solve really.