Construction & Engineering: ReconstructED
The built environment comprises every building and piece of infrastructure that we interact with. The construction and built environment sector is one of the largest sectors in the global economy, and almost certainly the one whose impact is the most apparent in day-to-day life. Global expenditure on the construction industry today exceeds $11 trillion – or 13% of global GDP – and this already-vast figure is set to rise to near $15 trillion by the end of the decade. Training for built environment-related skills is based on in-person site visits. While there is no substitute for hands-on experience of working onsite, relying solely on this kind of in-person experiential learning risks leaving learners with a glimpse of a bigger picture. Edify’s work with Class of Your Own resulted in ReconstructED: a unique and rich tool for built environment and infrastructure training.
Lesson Details:
The built environment comprises every building and piece of infrastructure that we interact with. The construction and built environment sector is one of the largest sectors in the global economy, and almost certainly the one whose impact is the most apparent in day-to-day life. Global expenditure on the construction industry today exceeds $11 trillion – or 13% of global GDP – and this already-vast figure is set to rise to near $15 trillion by the end of the decade. Training for built environment-related skills is based on in-person site visits. While there is no substitute for hands-on experience of working onsite, relying solely on this kind of in-person experiential learning risks leaving learners with a glimpse of a bigger picture. Edify’s work with Class of Your Own resulted in ReconstructED: a unique and rich tool for built environment and infrastructure training.
Who is the client and what do they do?
Class Of Your Own creates world-leading, STEM-focused Built Environment and Infrastructure learning programmes that deliver genuine social, economic and environmental impact. Class Of Your Own (COYO) are also award-winning creators of the Design Engineer Construct! Learning Programme. Through their online learning platform, COYO, they facilitate young people discovering career pathways into architecture, engineering and construction.
Goals before partnering with Edify?
COYO believes in empowering and educating children and young people everywhere so they can design, engineer and construct an extraordinary future. COYO founder Alison Watson is passionate about inspiring and enabling the development of home-grown talent in creating the future workforce of the construction industry. COYO’s goals revolve around offering strong routes to technical and professional occupations with COYO school graduates recruited directly into apprenticeships.
What was the need the Edify project fulfilled?
Every aspiring design, engineering and construction professional needs experience of the building site. Site visits provide rich experiential training but are often limited in duration and frequency, meaning learners are unable to maximise learning opportunities on site. Access to construction site-based learning opportunities for trainees can be costly, logistically tricky, and pose additional hazards onsite. A one-off site visits only allows learners to see the site as a ‘snapshot’ – requiring imagination to consider what the site looks like under different conditions.
How did Edify satisfy those needs and help them meet its goals?
Together, Edify and COYO created ReconstructED, a teaching and learning tool that allows learners to bring the site to the classroom. This offers users the ability to visit a site directly from their desktop computer or at 1:1 scale in VR. Learners can virtually access sites using ReconstructED in their own time and whenever they need to. ReconstructED enables uninhibited access through VR and desktop to sites that are otherwise unreachable, hazardous or costly to visit.
With Edify’s import tool, users can add their own building designs directly to the construction site and see how the building fits into the environment. The ability to evaluate your design in situ and adjust based on the context leads to a more thoughtful, calculated and inclusive design process.
The Site Analysis section takes students through a step by step, objective based journey around a site, teaching them how to survey, measure and assess a site with all the basic points to consider when doing so. Unlike site visits, ReconstructED presents students with a learning experience they can access an unlimited number of times, repeat endlessly and learn from – infinitely.
The Edify platform provides the perfect tools to aid in all stages of architectural design from site analysis and surveying to reviewing designed buildings in context. Other tools such as Orientation, Section Slicing and Sun Path all offer a richer, well-rounded understanding of the site and its surrounding environment.
Learners can change and toggle time, date and location variables to accurately assess sun light and shadow conditions on site and with their building in situ through manipulating their site’s Orientation and Sun Path. Tools such as the Stake and Slope tools allow students to measure distances and angles and Slicing and Bird's eye tools provide students with a fresh perspective of their sites and models alike.
Edify’s work with Class Of Your Own has created a suite of built environment and infrastructure skills training tools that can empower the next generation of architects, engineers, planners and builders. ReconstructED gives learners and trainees access to an array of training opportunities that might otherwise have been difficult to access, dangerous, or just outright impossible. The built environment is of vital importance to the global economy and to day-to-day life: ReconstructED represents a step-change in training for built environment-related skills.
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Construction & Engineering: ReconstructED
