91ÊÓƵ

Team 2, of which I am a mentor, does not have a resident mechanical engineer on board to provide expertise, so we reached out to find a professional willing to talk to the students about this week’s subject: MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) engineering. We were fortunate to have guest mentor Justin Rebitzke, of Interface Engineering, speak to the students about his line of work and the role mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems will need to play in their design project – the arts addition to a local high school.

After Justin’s presentation, our team had some discussion about what MEP design features we would like to include in our design. In addition to the standard MEP building elements, the students decided to include photovoltaic rooftop panels, a rainwater catchment system (allowing for collection and storage of rainwater for reuse) and an elevator.

The students and mentors then split up into smaller groups to divide and conquer. One group worked to finalize building sections, which we started in a previous session. Other groups worked on the MEP layout and reflected ceiling plans.

As the students starting laying out the MEP on the already developed building plan, they started to find that the existing building floor layout wasn’t allowing for an ideal layout of the MEP systems. The students did what they could to conform to the already proposed floor plan, but found that some design elements required a change in the layout. For example, the existing layout did not allow for the addition of an elevator; the students, however, thought it was important to provide wheelchair access to the second-floor classrooms of the addition.

The students working on the MEP brought this up with the larger group, and the team decided on a way to rearrange some of the offices in order to provide for an elevator. The mentors were sure to mention that this is the type of back-and-forth conversation that architects, engineers and contractors have with each other on a regular basis. We highlighted for the students that successfully working through complex projects often requires communication between various disciplines; something the students are starting to experience firsthand.