February 10th, 2012
Feb 10th, 2012 by charlesnoftall
Hello everyone, it’s Charles Noftall coming to you this week with this week’s blog submission…
Today we capped off a very productive week with a visit to Science World where we met with Mila and Georgia about our project. This week we also had a visit with David Kaplan of the UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems, as a follow up to last week’s meeting with Laura Sand, and we made a first copy of our project ECD.
Our meeting with David Kaplan went well as we were able to ask him lots of questions about his greenhouse, which is more sophisticated than the one which Laura Sand manages. We specifically asked him questions about automating our heating and ventilation systems, which he believes to be a necessity in a greenhouse. David was very accommodating to our request and generous with his time and we are using lots of his suggestions in our design. In addition to the automated ventilation, he also suggested using sun shades (which could also be automated) and concrete flooring rather than gravel. David also gave us a very good suggestion in using electric heat tracing cables to warm any soil which may be exposed to colder temperatures, such as the clear soil-profile box. After the meeting with David we went to the Agorra Cafe for a mid-afternoon snack and drew up the first draft of the ECD. It feels great to have everything on paper!
Today’s meeting with Mila and Georgia also went well. We were able to present our ECD and the Google SketchUp model that Logan made. They seemed to be pleased with our progress and liked our ideas, and they also had some really good feedback for us to consider before our final submission, including:
- Reducing the size of the transparent soil profile box to maximize usable space in the greenhouse
- Putting in some research on whether or not mold/algae/other foreign organisms may grow on the edges of the soil profile box and, if so, is there something we can do to prevent that (i.e.-a clear plastic membrane of some sort?)
- Since there are already some plants similar to the hanging wall/vines at the back of the greenhouse, could we put more shelves in so we could have more plants.
- Could we revisit the exterior material choices to see if there is something that may have better insulation than the double-paned glass without compromising viewer enjoyment (i.e.-transparency)
- Could we put the post and beam structure on the SketchUp drawings to give a more realistic idea of what it will look like (rather than the idealized view currently being represented)
Mila and Georgia also requested that we submit our justifications/research for our project, so they have them as they move forward on the project once we are finished. Finally, they requested that we move our final submission date from next Friday, and we tentatively agreed on moving it to the week after mid-semester’s break as Friday afternoons do not work well for the Science World staff.
All in all, I think this week may have been our most rewarding week to date as we are beginning to see our design really come together and we now have more tangible evidence of all the hard work we’ve put into it. We still have work to do, but we are definitely up for it!
Congratulations! It’s great to read about your progress!
Now that the end of the project is in sight, can you reflect on the role of “relationship-building” in the successful completion of a project? I’m offering this question because CIVL 202 is a “technology and society” course. So perhaps relationship building fits into the society part of engineering practice.
Although it’s not part of the deliverables for CIVL 202, would you be able to send me a copy of your ECD? I’d really like to have a look.
Regards,
SN
I’m so glad to see the growing enthusiasm and remarkable progress of your team project. Great job guys!
@Nesbit,
Can you please elaborate more on the “relationship building”? Thank you!
Yes! It seems that the successful completion of the project depends on establishing and maintaining successful relationships between team members and with the client. If you agree with the idea that relationship-building is important, then I wonder if there are any “take-home” messages about relationship-building that you have gotten from your CSL project experiences.
Regards,
SN