The Design and Build Expo made its debut Tuesday, April 22 in the Bronco Student Center (BSC) Lyra room at 10 a.m.
The expo started off with a tutorial on the Bluebeam Revu software which is an American-made software created to help convert Microsoft and computer-aided design (CAD) drawings into a PDF format.
Students learned how it can facilitate smoother work flows in design-build projects.
Sophie Macks, academic program coordinator for Bluebeam, led the demo tutorial on the Bluebeam Revu software, where she demonstrated step-by-step how to navigate through the program.
“Bluebeam Revu reduces the complexity that exists with multiple file formats by providing an efficient way to share the information,” Macks said. “Bluebeam is used by 94% of contractors and 86% of design firms.”
Only students who RSVP’d were able to experience the demo and have a chance to win raffle prizes, but students who didn’t register were able to sit in on the panel discussion.
The expo was hosted by the Design and Build Institute of America (DBIA) student chapter which featured guests from MATT Construction and CO Architects.
The panel discussion consisted of the case study of Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST) drone laboratory, which is a design-build project completed in 2017.
Julie Wietecha, the senior project manager at MATT Construction, then explained how the process of designing and building the design usually works.
“The owner hires an architect, the architect hires design consultants then we hire the contractor to build our design,” Wietecha said. “The owner and the architect sit together and develop some documents, then we come in and get these documents, ask our questions then we test the cost of that project in the market.”
Andrew Labov, the principal of CO Architects, explained to students the difference between prescriptive and performance. He described prescriptive as the owner of the building taking more of a risk, while performance referred to taking the safe route.
“If the owner forgets to tell you something then that[‘s] more money they have to put out,” Labov said. “But if the owner tells me I want a piece of pie and I’m not going to tell you what it looks like, then I have to guess, so I have to go through this until I get it to their liking.”
Labov and Wietecha showed students a slideshow of some design-build projects, such as the CAST drone laboratory they worked on at Caltech and explained what the process looked like.
“We ended up with a very high-tech laboratory where they actually assembled components of satellites and it is a very highly prescriptive space which can perform at a specific range of temperature and cleanliness,” Labov said. “We were unable to bring some public space such as conference areas.”
For more information on future events from the Cal Poly Pomona student chapter of DBIA here on campus, you can visit its Instagram account @cpp.dbia.