Education

Teaching

CE 413: Construction Methods

This course teaches the fundamental knowledge and skills required for construction project management. Topics include introduction of the construction industry, bidding and procurement of projects, contracting, planning and scheduling of construction activities, equipment issues, labor, cost estimating and control, materials management, and safety.

CE 414: Construction Engineering

This course introduces the fundamental concept of construction engineering and the role of the engineer in the construction workplace. It comprises the materials including introduction to the construction processes (e.g., construction planning, design, and construction), construction site layout, earthmoving materials and operations, quantity takeoff, construction equipment and equipment selection, productivity improvement, construction methods and practice, wood/concrete/steel construction, and management of constructed facilities.

CE 418 & CE 518: Construction Estimating

This course delivers systematic, logical, and analytical approaches to quantity takeoff and unit rate fixing based on engineering design, survey, and resource use subject to site conditions for safety, quality, and productivity. A construction engineer evaluates engineering design and site situation in order to predict time and cost implications for “what if” scenarios and achieve safety, quality and efficiency in construction. This course facilitates students to learn how to define, assess and analyze such “what-if” scenarios in construction with regards to Design, Materials, Method, Quantity, Productivity, and Rate.

CE 210: Introductory Computer Aided Design and Drafting for Civil Engineers

This is an introductory class for junior undergraduate students in civil engineering. Its goal is to teach the basic concepts, knowledge and skills of computer aided design and drafting (CADD) for civil and environmental engineering projects. The class takes place in the format of lecture and laboratory exercise. The topics include software user interface, drawing setup and templates, coordinate geometry, placing and editing geometric elements and text, dimensioning, orthographic projection and drawing, three-dimensional modeling, establishing existing conditions using survey data, land development and corridor design, and topographic mapping and earthwork calculations.

CE 593S: Sensing and Analytical Methods for Construction

This course provides comprehensive knowledge and skills about data science and research methods in construction engineering and civil infrastructure. It comprises the introduction of technical capabilities of various data acquisition and analysis techniques and how these techniques can help construction project managers to achieve accurate and timely decision making. In parallel, this course provides the knowledge and skills of quantitative research design for construction engineering research.

CE 493G & CE 593G: Civil 3D Building Information Modeling

This course provides fundamental knowledge of building information models (BIM) for parametric design and interactive visualization of civil engineering projects. It intends to prepare civil engineering students for entry-level production use of civil 3D BIM tools through learning and practicing of small-scale near-real projects in AutoCAD Civil 3D environment.

Outreach

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (CEE-SURF)

The West Virginia University CEE-SURF was created for attracting and retaining the best WVU-CEE students to graduate programs. It provides opportunities for undergraduate students to gain understanding of the latest research so that they are well prepared for the global market.

Through CEE-SURF, Dr. Dai has the opportunity to continuously advise CEE undergraduates at ICIL during summer. For example, Ryan Hough worked at ICIL in 2013 summer and conducted research activities on characterizing strategies of fixing full scale models in construction photogrammetric surveying. Chelsea Evans (African American female) worked at ICIL in 2013 summer and conducted research activities on determination of camera interior parameters in construction photogrammetric surveying. Carl Freeman (African American) worked at ICIL in 2015 summer and performed comparative experiments of background subtraction algorithms for visual recognition of construction workers and equipment. John Wright worked at ICIL in 2015 summer and collected site image data for automated construction safety performance measurements. Through this experience, the students knew better about problems in construction engineering and some continued their research experience through enrollments to graduate programs.

Engineering Challenge Camps

The ICIL lab has been working closely with the West Virginia University Engineering Challenge Camps to motivate K-12 students to get excited about science and engineering by tackling engineering-related challenges.

In the 2013 Connecting the Dots High School Camp, Dr. Dai gave a lecture on "The Fundamental of Bridge Engineering" and engaged the students in "Building Bridges - West Point Bridge Competition". The students came from all over the states such as West Virginia, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland. The three first place winners were presented with a certificate as "Future Bridge Engineer Star" by the ICIL lab.