Trends Winter 2018 | Page 24

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