Entrepreneurship Competency
I personally don't see myself as a businessman, and I've had lots of self-doubt when thinking of making a sellable product or starting a small company, as some of my friends have as early as high school. However, after completing some realistic, large scale project simulations, I have gained more confidence, and can actually see myself someday starting a company or organization to deliver something great to everyday people.
As part of this years American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Rocky Mountain regional student Symposium, I joined the School of Mines team for the Sustainable Solutions competition event. The goal for our team was, as ASCE outlined, to attempt to address the issue of homelessness across the country and develop sustainable design to do so. In this simulated project, the city of ASCE has a usable site (shown in diagram on top left of page) and a Request for Proposals to develop that site as a community of 10 tiny homes. These homes are to serve part of the homeless population, to give them a place to establish themselves, find jobs, and then move on to support themselves in stable lives.
I signed up for the team at Mines, and after seeing I was the only one so far, got a team of younger civil engineering students together. Each team member had some experience in site design from academics, but the real additions of the newer team members came in their excitement for the project concept. Similar to me, and all civil engineers, their interest came in having a real positive effect in a project that they'd engineer themselves.
For this simulated project, we created a finalized civil layout (top right of page), design calculations (lower left) an extensive cost estimate (right) using primarily local sources, and finally details of how our concept matched Envision sustainability criteria (lower right). I was glad to coordinate all of this work with younger aspiring civil engineers and serve as a leader for my team. Together we came up with an amazing design that I see a city taking and implementing in order to address the original RFP and goals.
