An Associate Project Manager with one of the world’s biggest international engineering and construction consultants – AECOM – visited Forth Valley College’s Falkirk Campus recently to talk to students.
Kier White (MSc MRICS MAPM) is a Chartered Surveyor as well as a qualified Project Manager and has worked extensively throughout the UK, but also across Europe and in Australia.
Falkirk lad Kier’s mum Katie White works as an Additional Support Worker at FVC. She was happy to ‘volunteer’ her son’s services, to give Civil Engineering and Architectural students a presentation on some of the complex and fascinating projects he has managed.
Kier, said: “It was good to speak with the students about my project work from an architectural and engineering point of view. They were an enthusiastic group and they asked a lot of interesting questions throughout the presentation and group design exercise.
“My advice to them would be to stick in at College and to get as much work experience as possible because this will help them secure a job once they finish their courses.”
FVC Construction Lecturer Kevin McLaren, said: “There was something for our civil engineering students with the tricky roadworks alterations at BRC Campus, Fareham College. The fabulous Woodlands project at Canford Cliffs highlighted tricky basement waterproofing works and the coordination issues involved with car lifts! The setting looks wonderful – a nice place for FVC lecturers to retire maybe?
“The Student Accommodation for the Arts University in Bournemouth also highlighted the range of consultants that can make up a full design team. That same project also featured the unusual requirement to safely translocate hundreds of slow worms!
“The Bridgeport Arts Centre in Rye on a riverside setting looked like the ideal project – and had a client with lots of money to spend on a project dear to his heart.
“The CAD and architectural design students are also studying planning issues – so Kier threw in some projects that, for a number of reasons, did not make it through the planning permission stage. Tree Protection Orders, great crested newts and unexploded bombs, all sound like good reasons why a project never gets off the ground!
“Thank you Kier for an interesting and very visual presentation. The students loved it! But it wasn’t Kier doing all of the work! He set our students a design exercise based on a real project. There was a prize of a box of chocolates for the winning team. Well done Eva, Scott and John-Jo… And thanks for sharing the chocolates!”