USE Senior Design objectives

The USE Senior Design Project is a two semester project. Students will take USE 490 in the fall semester and USE 495 in the spring semester. The purpose of these courses is to provide you with the experience of conceiving, designing and implementing a typical urban design project, and of presenting your results in both oral and written form. The primary goal is to produce a design for a contemporary urban systems project.

The primary objective of USE 490 and USE 495 is to expose the Urban Systems Engineering student to the following:

1. The engineering design process,
2. an integration of all design fundamentals and teamwork essential to an effective Urban Systems Engineering design team,
3. a comprehensive design effort including land, transportation, water, energy and telecommunications systems.

Senior Design Project Syllabus

Schedule for USE 490:

• Week 1: Introduction, Kick-off meeting. Organize team, select team leader, and assign preliminary responsibilities.
• Week 4: Present Plan for accomplishing work. Rough work breakdown and prepare a calendar-based task schedule logic chart or bar chart to depict how you will get the work done.
• Week 5-14:A 30%, 70%, and 95% in-progess review
• Week 15: Final presentation for the design jury and invited guests.

Schedule for USE 495:

• Week 1: Introduction, Kick-off meeting.
• Week 8: Design approach, calculations and drawings due.
• Week 11: Provide a short report defending your design and your approach, your drawings and a computer disk with your work on it.
• Week 15: Verbal presentation

USE Typical Senior Design Projects

USE 490 Project

Situation: Our firm, Gogetum Urban Systems Engineering, Inc., has just been notified that we will be awarded a site design project. The site is at least 50 acres in size. We will be doing the preliminary engineering design followed by the detailed design for all services to and on the site. This includes energy systems, water systems, transportation systems, and telecommunication systems. Our preliminary work must include environmental impact assessments. A rough grading plan is also required in the first phase.

USE 495 Project

The materials from USE 490 serve as a starting point for the USE 495 project. The project will consist of three parts.

Part I: Four teams are formed to do the detailed design of the (a) water supply and distribution system, (b) wastewater collection system, (c) stormwater management system, and (d) the transportation system.

Part II: Each student is assigned two lots. Site a home of your choice on the two lots, grade the lot for drainage and driveway, design the utility connections for the two homes connecting them with the closest primary systems and include the entire cross-section design of the collector street adjacent to your lots.

Part III: Verbal presentation.

Project Sources

USE projects are provided by faculty with industry interaction. Projects are real world situations but can not be used for real world implementation. In the future there will be a list of project sources to choose from.

Interdisciplinary Projects

All Urban Systems Engineering projects involve the design of water transportation, energy, and telecommunication systems and consider social, political, economic and environmental factors. Projects are typically land development and design oriented.

Students from other disciplines are encouraged to explore the possibilities of teaming with Urban Systems Engineering projects. If interested, those students should contact the Urban Systems Engineering faculty advisor.

Project Presentation

There are written and oral presentations at the end of each course. The oral presentation is done in a public forum in front of a design jury and is open to parents, faculty and students. Please see the syllabus for more information .

Prerequisites: USE 490 and USE 495

Syst 301

Corequisites: USE 490 and USE 495

USE 400

How to Register

1. Meet the course Requirements
2. Register for USE 490 Fall Semester and USE 495 Spring Semester

   USE 490 is a prerequisite of USE 495. These classses are to be taken back to back.

Contact:

Dr. Terrance C. Ryan, P.E. by e-mail ( tryan@gmu.edu) or by appointment
ST II rm 303
(703) 993-1657

Terrance C. Ryan - received the M.S. and Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois in Civil Engineering Systems, the latter in 1974 after several years of field engineering experience with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He is a 1965 B.S. graduate of the U.S. Military Academy with over 20 years of construction management, information management, operations research and teaching experience. At George Washington University, he was a Distinguished Visiting Professor, from 1986 to 1989, teaching construction management and decision science courses. Other teaching experience was with the U.S. Military Academy as an Assistant Professor, and with the University of Southern California. While working at the Construction Engineering research Laboratory, Dr. Ryan was chosen as Researcher of the Year and has maintained his research interests in the applications of information management and decision science in engineering and construction. He has been a construction manager of a large academic facility built for the Saudi Arabian government and as Vice President for a $100 million annual specialty retail chain, was responsible for the design, construction and maintenance of over 120 stores and 300,000 square feet of space. A Virginia Registered Professional Engineer, his consulting experience has been in small business management, in construction management for developers and as a senior advisor to a minority owned architect-engineer firm specializing in projcet management services. Dr. Ryan joined the faculty of George Mason University in June of 1989 as a Visiting Professor of Urban Systems Engineering. He is currently Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Studies for external efforts, and active in administrative efforts for the Urban Systems Engineering program in the School of Information Technology and Engineering.