Purdue News

January 20, 1995 Construction Department To Dedicate Project Manager Lab WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University's School of Technology will dedicate a state-of-the-art computer-integrated project management laboratory at 1:30 p.m. Friday (1/27). The new Project Management Office Laboratory, in Room 416, Knoy Hall of Technology, replicates the "home office" of a construction company. It is linked electronically to an existing Construction Methods Laboratory and to the Technical Graphics Department and serves as the final piece of the puzzle in replicating a construction company. "This allows us to fully simulate all of the elements in an actual construction firm," said Stephen D. Schuette, head of the Department of Building Construction and Contracting. "Students will use the latest technological advances to prepare estimates, make bids, plan construction, manage pay requests and coordinate all of the documentation and communication necessary in an actual contract. Designs for the actual structures will be prepared in our Technical Graphics Department, where computer-aided drawings will be transmitted electronically to the project management lab." Eight companies contributed more than $190,000 in gifts and equipment to the lab. They are: Centex Corp., Dallas; Estimation Inc., Linthicum Heights, Md.; Hensel Phelps Construction Co., Greeley, Colo.; LaSalle Construction, Chicago; Pulte Corp., Bloomfield Hills, Mich.; Rudolph & Sletten Inc., Foster City, Calif.; The Estridge Group, Indianapolis; and the Pepper Companies, Chicago. Representatives from each of those companies will be at the dedication. "We are proud to be recognized as a leader in the field of applied construction technology," said Don K. Gentry, dean of the School of Technology. "Thanks to the support of field-proven companies such as these, Purdue continues to lead by example and build 'one brick higher.' This new lab will provide students with hands-on experience that ranges from using computers to develop and transmit ideas to using advanced technology to build the structures they design." The new lab is divided into eight three-person offices. Each office is equipped with computers, digitizers, telephones, fax cards, e-mail and other auxiliary equipment. Students work in teams on all projects. Faculty play the roles of subcontractors, vendors and public officials. Projects don't end, however, in the new lab. Once plans are complete, they are sent to the "field office," or the Construction Methods Laboratory. There, six floors below in the basement of Knoy Hall, is a two-story, 37,800-cubic-foot laboratory where teams of students direct and manage the construction of wood, steel, masonry and concrete structures. Once testing is complete on each structure, students tear it down and begin a new one. "I don't know of any other facility in the country that is this comprehensive and complete," Schuette said. "Students who go through the Building Construction and Contracting program here at Purdue are going to get hands-on, A to Z experience and will be some of the best prepared graduates in the country in the field of construction management." Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu