Audio Transcript: Dr. Liam O’Brien on the Building Engineering Program

Liam O’Brien: So pretty early on in our time, with the undergraduate program, when we had just 2 or 3 faculty members working in the sort of buildings area from a non-structural perspective, we realized that there were a lot of constraints imposed on us in terms of supervising graduate students, conducting research, going through the process, such as the Joint Institute, where we didn’t really have counterparts and an equivalent program at Ottawa U.

So we wanted to gain a bit of control over processes, you know, improve branding, because we didn’t exactly fit into civil or environmental engineering, etc. So after, well, after about 3 or 4 years of administration and proposals, and approvals at various levels, including the committee that represents the Ontario government, the Building Engineering program started. And I think we, accepted the first class of students around 2021. Burak [Gunay] is confirming. And the Building Engineering program takes students from, well, various backgrounds, like Engineering and Architecture and Physics, and there’s a Master’s and PhD program.

And it’s notable that we also incorporated fire safety into the area, as well as heritage, and kind of what we call, performance. And so the number of professors in the program is approximately 9 or 10. So, to some extent, it’s a continuation of the Architectural Conservation and Sustainability Engineering [undergraduate] program, but it’s a little bit different just because of the active research areas and the types of faculty involved.

And the program, despite being only about 5 years old, has grown to be very big. I think it’s one of the biggest graduate programs in the department.

Amanda Jeysing: Wouldn’t that have been during, right after lockdown 2020, as well, that period? So, were some of the first courses offered online, in that case?

Liam O’Brien: Yeah, the courses were offered online, and this may have been a bit of a blessing, because it added a lot of flexibility in terms of students being able to participate in the program no matter where they were in the world. So that, I think, contributed to us being able to grow very quickly at the beginning.

In fact, a lot of existing students who were technically registered in Civil or Environmental Engineering, but under faculty within Building Engineering, switched immediately. And so, we had students graduating with a PhD, probably as soon as 4 or 8 months after the program started, because they were basically wrapping up their research when the program was officially approved.

I mean, traditionally, topics covered under building engineering did not fit in any other engineering discipline. So, for example, Civil Engineering has traditionally been focused on building structures and some other things, like transportation. But aspects like, you know, building envelopes, heating and cooling equipment, overall building performance, occupant comfort, renewable energy generation incorporation into buildings, etc.

These topics generally fell between programs, so kind of in the cracks. And that’s reflected everywhere from, like, grant programs to training programs, and so we wanted to bring a program that, well, filled the gaps. But yet, our topics are similar enough, and based on fundamentals that students would get in, like, Mechanical Engineering, or Civil Engineering, or Environmental Engineering, that they could transition. So, a lot of our students do come from other programs.