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Construction Site Visits During Pandemic Period and Their Use in Post-Pandemic Times

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Architectural Engineering Division (ARCHE) Technical Session 2

Tagged Division

Architectural Engineering Division (ARCHE)

Page Count

12

DOI

10.18260/1-2--42756

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/42756

Download Count

109

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Paper Authors

biography

Luis Horacio Hernandez Carrasco P.E. Tecnologico de Monterrey (ITESM)

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Civil Engineer
Master degree in Structural Engineering
Master in Business Administration
Full time professor at (Tec de Monterrey) ITESM
Professional Registered Engineer in Structural Design

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biography

Miguel X. Rodriguez-Paz Tecnologico de Monterrey (ITESM) Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-9975-9847

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Prof. Rodríguez-Paz got his B.Sc. In Civil Engineering from Tecnologico de Oaxaca in 1993. He studied a M.Sc. In Structural Engineering at Tecnologico de Monterrey and got his Ph.D. from the University of Wales at Swansea in 2003 where he did research on

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biography

Saul E. Crespo Tecnologico de Monterrey (ITESM)

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Bachelor in Civil Engineering with a Master of Science in Structural Engineering and PhD candidate in Structural Engineering. From April 2011 to July 2017 he served as Senior Researcher of the "Structural Health Monitoring" group of the Mexican Institute of Transportation, directing and collaborating in monitoring and structural prognosis projects applied to special highway bridges, transportation infrastructure, historical monuments and structural systems. He has developed research projects in the area of structural deterioration of reinforced concrete bridges and in the development of damage detection techniques in structural systems based on Non Destructive Evaluation. He actively collaborated in the creation and development of the Monitoring Center for Intelligent Bridges and Structures, leading the analysis and structural evaluation of the systems. In the academic field, he has worked as a professor in the Civil Engineering career, in the area of structural engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) Campus Querétaro. He has directed research projects for undergraduate and master's degree students. He has authored several technical publications of the Mexican Institute of Transportation, extensive publications in congresses, international and national symposiums, as well as in scientific journals. From 2017 to 2020 he served as Director of the Civil Engineering program at Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Querétaro and as professor of the Structural Engineering area at the institution and since November 2020 he leads the Department of Sustainable Technologies and Civil Engineering at Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Querétaro.

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Abstract

During the years 2020 - 2021, students and lecturers have faced academical challenges like no other generation before them. One of the most important changes was the inability of attending construction sites due to the pandemic conditions. Using different communication technologies, we developed a virtual lab on construction site visits to keep the students updated in everything related to the direct application of structural design concepts. After the pandemic restrictions were released, we have been using the experience obtained by keeping these virtual labs working. Sometimes, the construction site offers a limited attendance capacity so many students are not invited to be at the site, sometimes students are not close enough to the construction site, and other times, health or economic restrictions does not allow them to be at the site visit. This virtual construction site visit lab allows everybody interested to be an active participant of these activities. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the benefits obtained for the structural design learning process of these virtual construction sites lab. Construction site visits has always been a highly valuable element of Civil Engineering programs. It allows students to visualize construction processes and translate the numerical activities studied in the classroom to tangible projects. With the pandemic and the stay-at-home guidelines, construction site visits have a positive distraction factor from reality, becoming an element that motivates the students to participate and divert themselves from the current situation, additionally to the academical benefits that the visits provides. The purpose of this study is to present the results obtained by giving the students the opportunity of having an interactive, live-broadcast, virtual construction site visit without the necessity of actually being in the site. The purpose of the implementation of live streaming tools is to eliminate the one-way-talk, with the professor only speaking to himself. There has to be real-time interaction with the students in order to fulfill the emotional necessity of the student to feel as an active part of the activity, as well as granting him the advantages of making all of his questions in the moment they are presented and not later on, when both, the curiosity or the complete information, may be gone.

The capability of students to attend construction sites in contingency situations, is fundamental for the completion of the academic goals of the Civil Engineering curricula. It´s important that the students recognize this and the importance of the opportunity of experiencing these activities in challenging times.

Hernandez Carrasco, L. H., & Rodriguez-Paz, M. X., & Crespo, S. E. (2023, June), Construction Site Visits During Pandemic Period and Their Use in Post-Pandemic Times Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42756

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