Studio Information

This program kicks off in the fall of 2014. It is a collaboration between the civil engineering and construction management programs at Minnesota State University, Mankato and Wells Concrete Products Inc. This project has five primary objectives, which focus on civil engineering and construction management undergraduate students, and on practicing engineers in the southern Minnesota region.

1. To provide undergraduate civil engineering students with a working knowledge in the materials, methods, and design principles of prestressed and precast concrete.

2. To teach undergraduate construction management students the unique attributes of precast concrete, and to facilitate their ability to assess constructability, schedules, and cost estimates.

3. To introduce both civil engineering and construction management students to BIM so that each recognize its benefits, particularly when the BIM is shared between the engineer and contractor.

4. To serve as a resource for continuing education of professionals in both basic and advanced topics of precast/prestressed concrete.

5. To provide faculty and students the opportunities to engage in meaningful research especially beneficial to the precast industry.

The classes will occur in this sequence:

For civil engineering students:

•CIVE 447 Prestressed Concrete Design in the fall (3 cr)

•CM 492-1 Seminar: BIM (3 cr) in the spring (3 cr)

For construction management students:

•CM 450 Construction Capstone Project (3 cr) in the fall

•CM 492-4 Seminar: Risk Management (3 cr) in the spring

In addition to having several upper-level courses that will support the program, the school will offer continuing education seminars on inspection of precast/prestressed concrete structures and fundamentals of prestressed concrete. The program faculty will work in close collaboration with industry partners from Wells Concrete and the PCI Midwest.