college needs to be nimble in responding to needs for
technical and trade careers.
“As engineers we have to be creative and adaptable,”
Wahlstrand said. “With every project we’re learning about
CVTC’s mission and who they’re serving.”
Balancing budgets and resources to create spaces
that best serve CVTC is always a challenge, Bagley said.
He noted the college spends many hours every year
developing short- and long-range plans to prioritize
requests and invest resources where they will have the
most impact for CVTC students and the surrounding
communities. Maintaining a staff with the knowledge set
to operate and repair buildings across a wide spectrum
of unique labs and equipment can also be challenging, he
said.
This year, for example, CVTC added a culinary program.
“That prompted the need to learn about a whole new
industry in order to build a kitchen that would meet
program needs,” Bagley said. That included learning about
different types of kitchen and food preparation equipment
as well as fire suppression systems, health department
codes, and kitchen infrastructure, including exhaust hoods
and controls. “While the individual concepts were similar
to other types of facility systems, applying these attributes
and how they all interact to create a state-of-the-art
kitchen was challenging,” Bagley said.
24│ TRENDS
But engineers love to rise to challenges like this.
“It’s constantly changing,” Wahlstrand said. “CVTC needs
to respond to changes in the marketplace, so they and
Ayres need to switch gears a lot.”
Even a small project serves a higher purpose, she said, as
the CVTC facilities group and Ayres engineers work to see
how it fits into the campus as a whole – and how a change
in one place can impact another area.
“Ayres has always been there for CVTC, and even if we
are not working on a specific job, Ayres always makes
themselves available to answer a question or provide an
opinion on how to proceed with a situation we may be
dealing with,” Bagley said. “I appreciate the dedication,
knowledge, and willingness to share that the Ayres team
brings to our projects and the support they provide to
CVTC.”
Campus projects bring engineers back to
their educational roots
The University of South Florida has campuses in Tampa,
St. Petersburg, and Sarasota-Manatee and an overall
student population of more than 50,000. Ayres Associates
has served USF as its civil engineer since 2001 and has
designed over 65 projects throughout the Tampa and St.
Petersburg campuses. Projects have included the $25