About the Team

Hello everyone! We are a group of six second year civil engineering students participating in the 2014 Community-Based Experiential Learning (CBEL) project to help develop our professionalism skills by engaging in local projects. In this project we plan a real project for real clients to benefit the local community. We are all looking forward to working with our client, The Richmond Food Bank, to fulfill their goals and expectations.

Project Overview

We will be collaborating with the Richmond Food Bank, a non-profit organization, which provides nutritious food to community members in need. Founded in 1983, they have grown from serving 20 families a day to over 1350 families a week. After meeting with the client, we were given various projects that we could undertake. The Food Bank is mainly looking for a higher degree of organization and efficiency in their daily tasks. They also have a mice problem due to the high volume of rice and grains that are stored in the warehouse and are looking to improve the flow of their customers through the various food stations by opening up areas and creating better storage. The completion of this project will not only benefit the Food Bank but also the community by creating a much more efficient distribution process and hopefully continue the exceptional services of the organization.

Plan of Action

After meeting with our client and getting an overview of how things are run we feel it will be necessary to visit the food bank during their peak hours. After we get a better feel for the flow of traffic in the building we will start brainstorming potential solutions to improve the current situation with their customers. We will be collaborating with the other team working with the Richmond Food Bank to determine the two areas of highest priority.At this point we are in a very early stage of the design process and are still collecting information related to their current issues. Once this is done we will be able to set out more of a detailed plan of action.