Building Engineering

Information about Building Engineering

Building engineering as a discipline

Building engineering is an emerging engineering discipline, better known in the US as architectural engineering, that offers a general engineering approach to the planning, design, construction, operation, renovation, and maintenance of buildings, as well as with their impacts on the surrounding environment. The discipline requires pertinent knowledge integrated from traditional well-established disciplines:

Civil engineering for building structures and foundation;
Mechanical engineering for Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning system (HVAC), and for mechanical service systems;
Physics for building science, lighting and acoustics.
Electrical engineering for power distribution, control, and electrical systems;
Chemistry and biology for indoor air quality;
Architecture for form, function, building codes and specifications;
Economics for project management.

Building engineering students are ideally trained in all phases of the life cycle of a building, and learn to appreciate buildings as an advanced technological system requiring close integration of many sub-systems and their individual components. Technical problems and appropriate solutions are studied to improve the performance of the building in areas such as:

Energy efficiency, passive solar engineering, lighting and acoustics;
Construction management;
HVAC and control systems; Indoor air quality;
Advanced building materials; building envelope;
Earthquake resistance, wind effects on buildings, computer-aided design.

The building engineering graduate may work as a consulting engineer, design engineer, project manager, construction manager, cost engineer, facility manager, conservation-utility director, HVAC engineer and operation manager, process engineer, or in research and development, among other career possibilities.

Specializations in Building Engineering

Building Indoor Environment covers the environmental aspects in the design, analysis and operation of energy-efficient, healthy and comfortable buildings. Fields of specialization include: thermal comfort, air quality, lighting, acoustics, HVAC and control systems.
Building Envelope is an application area which draws from all areas of building engineering, especially building science and indoor environment. It focuses on the analysis and design of building envelopes, including durability, heat and moisture transfer and interaction with the indoor environment.
Building science focuses on the analysis and control of the physical phenomena affecting the performance of building materials and building enclosure systems.
Building Structure area concerns with the principles of structural mechanics, material behavior and their applications to the analysis and design of steel, reinforced concrete and timber building structures. Fields of specialization include: wind and seismic effects on buildings.
Construction Management includes construction techniques, construction processes, planning, scheduling; project tracking and control, labor and industrial relations, and legal issues in construction.
Computer Aided Engineering is an exciting area in Engineering. Even though computers have become ubiquitous in the architecture-engineering-construction industry, their present use is mostly limited to drafting, analysis, member sizing, cost estimation, and construction management. Computers have tremendous untapped potentials in the field of Building Engineering.
Energy Efficiency is also an application area which draws from the building science and building environment areas. It includes analysis, design, and control of energy-efficient or low-energy buildings, HVAC systems, solar energy utilization and intelligent buildings.

Education

Building engineering academic programs would normally provide an accredited academic degree. The completed degree may be designated as a Bachelor of Engineering, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Technology or Bachelor of Applied Science depending upon the university or institute. The length of study is between three to four years and the program consists of basics of engineering and sciences (technical drawing, engineering mechanics, mechanics of materials, thermodynamics, mathematics, computer programming, surveying), subjects in building engineering sciences (structural analysis and design, soil mechanics, building engineering systems, the aural and visual environment, building envelope design, building economics, construction management, thermal environment and building service systems). In some programmes, elective courses allow students to specialize in one or more sub-disciplines.

Building engineering graduates may pursue a postgraduate degree, such as a Master of Engineering, Master of Applied Science, an Engineer's degree, or a Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering. The Master and Engineer's degree may consist of either research, coursework or a mixture of the two. The Doctor of Philosophy consists of a significant research component and is often viewed as the entry point to academia.

Educational institutions offering Building Engineering

Institutions offering similar degrees degrees titled 'architectural engineering' can be found toward the end of the architectural engineering article.

An architectural engineer applies the skills of many engineering disciplines to the design, construction, operation, maintenance, and renovation of buildings while paying attention to their impacts on the surrounding environment.
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construction is the building or assembly of any infrastructure on a site or sites. Although this may not be thought of as a single activity, in fact construction is a feat of multitasking.
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Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design and construction of the physical and natural built environment, including works such as bridges, roads, canals, dams and buildings.
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HVAC may also stand for High-voltage alternating current

HVAC (pronounced either "H-V-A-C" or, occasionally, "aitch-vak") is an initialism/acronym that stands for "heating, ventilation, and air conditioning".
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Building science is the collection of scientific knowledge that focuses on the analysis and control of the physical phenomena affecting buildings. This includes the detailed analysis of building materials and building envelope systems.
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Not to be confused with lightning.

Lighting includes both artificial light sources such as lamps and natural illumination of interiors from daylight.
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Acoustics is the branch of physics concerned with the study of sound (mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids). A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician. The application of acoustics in technology is called acoustical engineering.
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Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) deals with the content of interior air that could affect health and comfort of building occupants. The IAQ may be compromised by microbial contaminants (mold, bacteria), chemicals (such as carbon monoxide, radon), allergens, or any mass or energy stressor
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Architecture is the art and science of designing buildings and structures. A wider definition often includes the design of the total built environment: from the macrolevel of town planning, urban design, and landscape architecture to the microlevel of construction details and,
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Project management is the discipline of organizing and managing resources (e.g. people) in such a way that the project is completed within defined scope, quality, time and cost constraints.
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engineer is someone who is trained or professionally engaged in a branch of engineering.^[1] Engineers use technology, mathematics, and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems.
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Design engineer is a general term that covers multiple engineering disciplines: Electrical, mechanical and civil engineering are the basic three. Architectural engineers, in the U.S., and building engineers in the U.K., are also examples of design engineers.
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Chemical engineering is the branch of engineering that deals with the application of physical science (e.g. chemistry and physics), with mathematics, to the process of converting raw materials or chemicals into more useful or valuable forms.
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Building indoor environment covers the environmental aspects in the design, analysis, and operation of energy-efficient, healthy, and comfortable buildings. Fields of specialization include architecture, HVAC design, thermal comfort, indoor air quality (IAQ), lighting, acoustics,
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A building envelope is the separation between the interior and the exterior environments of a building. It serves as the outer shell to protect the indoor environment as well as to facilitate its climate control.
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Structure is a fundamental and sometimes intangible notion covering the recognition, observation, nature, and stability of patterns and relationships of entities. From a child's verbal description of a snowflake, to the detailed scientific analysis of the properties of magnetic
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Construction Management refers either to the study and practice of the managerial and technological aspects of the construction industry (including construction, construction science, construction management, and construction technology), or to a business model where one party to a
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Computer-aided engineering (often referred to as CAE) is the use of information technology for supporting engineers in tasks such as analysis, simulation, design, manufacture, planning, diagnosis and repair.
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low-energy house is any type of house that uses less energy than a regular house.

General usage

In general use, the meaning of the term 'low-energy house' has changed over time, and will certainly change in the future.
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HVAC may also stand for High-voltage alternating current

Solar energy is energy from the sun. It supports life on Earth and drives the Earth's weather. Solar energy predominantly arrives in the form of infrared, visible and ultraviolet light, and is either returned back to space or is absorbed.
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Building automation is a programmed, computerized, intelligent network of electronic devices that monitor and control the mechanical and lighting systems in a building. The intent is to create an intelligent building and reduce energy and maintenance costs.
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A degree is any of a wide range of status levels conferred by institutions of higher education, such as universities, normally as the result of successfully completing a program of study.
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Bachelor of Engineering (commonly abbreviated as BE or BEng) is an undergraduate academic degree awarded to a student after three to five years of studying engineering at an accredited university in Australia, Canada, China, Finland, Germany, India, Ireland, Korea,
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Bachelor of Science (B.S., B.Sc. or less commonly, S.B. or Sc.B. from the Latin Scientiæ Baccalaureus) is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years (see below).
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Bachelor of Technology is an undergraduate academic degree conferred after completion of a three or four year program of studies at an accredited university or accredited university-level institution. The common abbreviation for Bachelor of Technology is B.Tech., or B.
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A Bachelor of Applied Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course of study that generally lasts three years in the United Kingdom and Australia, and four to five years in Canada, the Netherlands and the United States.
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