Day 22 RMIT Visit

Today we were able to sleep in a little bit before having to meet at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology).  One of our professors, Michael Hein, has a friend that is the Head of the school of Property, Construction, and Project Management here at RMIT from Princeton University, where they both received their masters in civil engineering. We started out the day with a 2-hour Q&A session with Mr. Ron Wakefield.  He was a great resource for comparing and contrasting all things related to construction in the U.S. and Australia because he has also lived and taught back in the states.  After this brief session we took a tour of RMIT’s campus to see some of the other buildings.  RMIT’s campus is in the middle of downtown Melbourne, with that being said no two of their buildings are alike.  Interestingly enough though, RMIT is the largest property owner in the city of Melbourne. 

Mr. Wakefield had arranged for us to tour their new business school building, the Swanston Academic Building, that was being built across the street from where his office was.  This 12 story, $200+ million building is an architectural masterpiece.  The irregularity of all of the walls and ceilings are accented with bright colors and unique learning environments that are designed to enable more collaborative learning models.  The contractor, Brookfield Multiplex, is scheduled to complete this massive project in around 18 months.  This, in and of it self, is remarkable.  Not to mention the fact that this is an extremely challenging project to build and coordinate in an urban setting.  Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed getting to take a tour of this project. 

The ceiling of one of the new student lounges

Getting debriefed

For our evening festivities, we were going to get wings at the pub next to where we were staying.  They had 50-cent wing night, which is an incredible deal even for back home.  Thirty wings later I needed to be rolled out of there in a wheel barrel.  We then walked down to the street to Queen Victoria Market.  It was a night market that night which meant that there were all types of food and drink vendors, as well as many vendors selling unique handmade crafts and jewelry from around the world.  One other aspect about the night market that I thought was particularly great was that there was live music all over the place.  It was so much fun to people watch and hear all kinds of music being played in a large outdoor setting.  Take a look at some of these pictures to get a better idea of what I am talking about.  

It was really crowded

 

Portuguese paella being made.  Just one example of all of the awesome food vendors

 Until next time, cheers!