A construction engineering and management professional’s success depends on their sound understanding of engineering principles, as well as their ability to visualize, understand, analyze and communicate intricate interdependencies among disciplines involved in the design and construction of civil infrastructure.

Such complexity is hard to replicate in classrooms, making construction engineering and management — or CEM — a field where true learning allegedly only takes place “on the job” through years of field experience.

The faculty team of Kamat and Menassa, intent on challenging this perceived notion, developed a scalable and reconfigurable Digital Sandbox, a toolkit of 3D visualization software. The toolkit employs model-based engineering concepts that enable instructors to replicate CEM field experiences in classroom settings.

The sandbox leverages technologies rooted in building information modeling to create Digital Twins that simulate real-world situations encountered in engineering projects. This allows instructors to create teaching content and assessments of varying complexity that are suitable for students of all levels and backgrounds. In effect, the Digital Sandbox represents a “theater” within which instructors can stage any “play.”

The sandbox and its experiential learning pedagogy were first introduced in two Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering construction classes (CEE 331 and CEE 435). Next, they were extended to other engineering courses at U-M (CEE 402, CEE 530) and Texas A&M University. The sandbox has also been used in an experiential teaching laboratory at U-M’s School of Nursing.

Feedback from students and employers has consistently lauded the originality of the Digital Sandbox and its impact, both for leveling the classroom playing field and for endowing students with skills desired in professional practice.

Above photo:

Vineet Kamat (left), John L. Tishman Family Professor of Construction Management and Sustainability and professor of civil and environmental engineering, College of Engineering

Carol Menassa (right), John L. Tishman Construction Management Faculty Scholar and professor of civil and environmental engineering, College of Engineering