Courses | VD Academic Affairs

Building and construction contract procedures, general conditions of contract and contract documents, bond and insurance requirements, preparation of technical specifications. The development of the concepts of professionalism and ethics and the traditional practice of these concepts are considered in relation to changing situations in practice in a variety of employment conditions. Case histories are discussed.

Fundamental definition and concepts of estimation, conceptual estimation, preliminary estimation, detailed estimation, building systems, measurements, pricing, computer tools and applications, bidding extensions of estimation to cash flow analysis.

Construction project initiation, budgeting, planning, scheduling, and control for construction operations using Critical Path Method (CPM). Concepts of networking techniques including activity-on-node (precedence) and activity-on-arrow, network computations, resource allocation and leveling, and time/cost tradeoffs, project control concepts and techniques are also taught. The course is supplemented with a 3-hour weekly session for various computer applications in construction engineering and management and for site visits to major projects.

An overview of the construction industry characteristics, construction organizations, and productivity improvement methods., It introduces data gathering techniques including questionnaires, interviews, surveys, work sampling and five minutes rating, techniques for presenting and implementing productivity improvement findings such as crew balance charts, process charts, and flow diagrams. It also covers safety and environmental health aspects on the construction sites.

Employment of major construction equipment and estimation of their production. A comprehensive introduction to concrete constituents, admixtures, construction methods, and testing. The course also introduces the types of mixers, ready mix concrete, pumping equipment, hot weather concreting, shotcreting, precast, cast-in-place, and prestressed concrete construction. It also covers formwork design for walls, columns and slabs as well as the employment of concrete construction equipment and calculation of their productivity of equipment including excavators, pile drivers, dumping trucks, and other types of heavy equipment.

Functional design of civil engineering systems, optimization of resources, linear programming, applied probability theory, economic analysis, cost benefit studies and applications, systems engineering techniques, value management.

Soil exploration, sampling and field measurements, types of foundations and criteria for selection, shallow foundations: ultimate bearing capacity, settlements, allowable soil pressure, mat foundations, deep foundations, earth pressure theories and retaining walls.

An introduction to design and construction of earth and earth retaining structures. Engineering applications include: retaining walls, flexible earth support, slope stability, dewatering techniques, soil improvement, and earth dams and embankments.

The fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS), Geomatics, is an engineering approach to solve, design and analysis the civil engineering systems related to spatial data. Space related problems of urban infrastructure and soil environmental studies. Spatial/ temporal data analysis, geoprocessing, geostatistical method, visualization, Interaction with Google earth, 3-D modeling, vector/raster data, and terrain-soil mapping.

Use of computer in the analysis of geotechnical problems: stress distribution in soil masses, settlement analysis, seepage flow, earth pressure, shoring (retaining walls, sheet piles, strutted excavations), slope stability, foundation analysis, and embankment and excavation problems. Geotechnical engineering modeling is reviewed. For each application the necessary theoretical background is reviewed and discrete modeling is discussed.

The course introduces the academic discipline of sustainability and explores how today's human societies can endure in the face of resource limitations, global change and environmental degradation. It addresses the issues of sustainability design from several points of view including economics, ecology, and technology. Concepts such as life cycle assessment, triple bottom line, inclusive wealth, and resilience are introduced from an engineering approach. A resource accounting perspective is developed in some detail with the emphasis in areas such as material resources, energy resources, sustainable infrastructure, green buildings and clean technology.

Introduction to traffic engineering, Traffic Flow theory and variables: volume, speed, density, headway and spacing, Traffic studies: speed, travel time and delay, volume, parking, pedestrians, accidents, and environmental impacts. Traffic simulation models: Poisson and queueing. Intersection capacity analysis, traffic signal design, geometric design of intersections, traffic control devices and regulations, traffic system management.

Introduction to existing and new traffic control systems strategies including both off-line signal optimization techniques and real-time computer traffic-responsive control concepts, control concepts and methods for signal intersection, arterial systems and area traffic networks, traffic control system evaluation techniques using measures of effectiveness (MOE's) for signal intersections, arterials and networks.

Application of soil classification methods to evaluate subgrade materials, introduction to various tests used to characterize pavement materials, stabilization techniques of subgrade and subbase materials, introduction to material variability and quality control, pavement evaluation and rehabilitation, pavement construction.

Principles and practices of urban transportation planning process, examination of the characteristics of urban travel, the application of systems approach to transport planning, survey design and data management, and calibrations of urban transport demand and supply models and alternative plan evaluation and the impact of transport systems on the environment.