An engineering senior design group from UGA won third place in an international competition sponsored by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers.
UGA students entered ASHRAE’s 2010 Student Design Project Competition in the Integrated Sustainable Building Design category and competed against teams from other colleges and universities to design an energy-efficient, sustainable patient tower for a hospital in Orlando, Fla. After winning its regional group, the UGA team competed against a final set of nine entries from across the U.S. and abroad.
The components for the patient tower included a lobby and reception area, an emergency room, a cafeteria, a gift shop, diagnostic imaging room, patient rooms, conference rooms and common areas. Given a series of design constraints, teams were judged on how well they integrated “green” design aspects within the engineering and architectural aspects of the project.
A team from Lawrence Technological University won first place, and a team from the University of Kansas finished second in the competition.
“The ‘real world’ aspects of this project made it more realistic for the students to experience what life would be like working for a design firm after graduation,” said Tom Lawrence, a public service associate for the Faculty of Engineering, who served as student adviser for the UGA team. “This third place win was particularly satisfying in that this category of the competition really favors schools that have both architecture and engineering programs.”
Members of the UGA team were Ben Fleetwood, Steven Barrett, Michael W. Cerny, Peter Dempsey, Andrew Raessler, Jeffrey Michael, Brittany Romig and Clay Waters. The third-place award includes a trip for one team representative to attend ASHRAE’s winter meeting in Las Vegas in January.
