Bell Favours Specialized Engineering Program

Friday, March 04, 2011 03:59 AM

Prince George, B.C. - Tied to an announcement of a Wood Innovation Design Centre for Prince George this fall is expected to be word of an engineering program...

Local MLA Pat Bell says an engineering program for the north is part of Premier-designate, Christy Clark's platform, though he did not offer details on when it might be announced while speaking on the Meisner program yesterday. Bell is crediting the head of the Northern Technology and Engineering Society of B.C., Dr. Albert Koehler, for his unceasing efforts to make the dream a reality.

For his part, the Forests Minister says he would like to see a specialized engineering program that focuses on building large-scale construction projects with wood. "There's a huge gap in the world around building bigger buildings out of wood."

Bell says only 19-percent of commercial-institutional construction uses wood right now, with the other 81-percent involving concrete, steel or other products. (This differs greatly to the residential housing sector where wood is used 95-percent of the time). Bell says there's very little room to grow in the housing sector, but huge opportunity to expand wood's 'market-share' on the commercial/institutional side.

However, Bell points out that there are only two architectural engineering firms in B.C. with the skills sets to build wood buildings more than four- or five-stories, so, something like a new ice arena. And the Forests Minister says in speaking with the owners of those two firms, he learned that one of them had to send his son to London, England to receive the appropriate training needed to work on these large wood-based projects.

Bell says, "To me, that's nuts that you can't get that here in British Columbia - the centre of the largest softwood lumber manufacturing industry in the world."

The local MLA says he envisions a program that would offer both on-site and on-line training, so that jurisdictions elsewhere in the world could learn from B.C..

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Posted on Friday, March 04, 2011 03:59 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: lonesome sparrow on March 4 2011 8:14 AM

If an engineering program is part of the WIC it is one more reason why it should be built on the main campus. It does not make sense to expect students to commute back and forth to attend classes, use the library, etc.

Posted by: lonesome sparrow on March 4 2011 8:28 AM

If it is built downtown with street level retail, I have dibs on "University Pawn and Second Hand" for the first store.

Posted by: rattyboy on March 4 2011 8:34 AM

I say one more time , ask the students where it should go. We keep make decisions for people will out asking them. Like a seniors home down town. ask them, they will say know.

Posted by: rattyboy on March 4 2011 8:47 AM

Hey I just had an idea. Let take bens internet news reporting and put it in print form. Think about it. We can do away with all this loging on b.s and we will have kids just simpley hand us our new in our hands right at the door. but sutch a great idea must have a name. Wait it is going to be printed on paper sooooooo,,, lets call it THE paper. This idea could really catch on and soon every city will have one. We need some thing to make it unique to us , to our city to our region to our people. IKNOW lets call it the citizen. or we could just ask Ben what he wants.

Posted by: gus on March 4 2011 9:08 AM

If one goes back to some of the information made public about this project over the years, there were also indications that it was not only engineering that would tie into this, but also potentially industrial design which is an associated discipline but not necessarily involving only engineering.

There are a number of industrial design programs in Canada. Some are very closely aligned with engineering schools and may actually be an engineering post graduate stream that deals with product design and manufacturing. Others are associated more on the artistic and creative side rather than the applied science side.

Here is an example undergraduate program from the U of Alberta which leans to the ideas creation side rather than the applied science side and would be better suited if the centre also deals with the use of wood in smaller products such as furniture rather than just larger building components.
http://www.artdesign.ualberta.ca/en/Undergraduate/Design_Studies/Industrial_Design.aspx

Posted by: gus on March 4 2011 9:16 AM

Why waste paper when we can print it on disk and people can put it into their DVD player, computer, etc. or they can rent a special disc reader from Ben.

And we can save all the money for people to distribute those disks by sending it over the net, to their computers, cell phones, etc.

Or we could have a community TV and community radio station which has community news and special interest programming and sends it to everyone over satellite, cable, telephone wires or local cells.

I mean the possibilities are endless.

Then again, we could also have a town crier walk around the downtown yelling out the current safety information. If we shut everyone off from every other source, many more would eventually live downtown .... LOL

Posted by: univ on March 4 2011 11:54 AM

When we talk about engineering program, then we need to discuss what job opportunities exist for the 30 or more graduates of the program when they graduate each year. How many jobs are there for wood engineering on monster.ca vs jobs for mechanical,civil or electrical engineering?

During Jago, UNBC did receive a substantial amount of funding from BC government to initiate main stream engineering programs, but the money was wasted in UNBC while other universities expanded their programs using the money and attracted more students and UNBC lost students. Why?

Right now the priority of MLA Pat Bell in UNBC should be put on engineering the machinery of a functioning administration system in UNBC and this does not need a single penny. It needs proper oversight to reform the dysfunctional post-Jago chaos and create a discrimination free collegial environment and a more "participatory style of management" in UNBC.

Posted by: He spoke on March 4 2011 2:37 PM

Oh come on, what are we going to do when we have no place to put our gripes, and our own limited visions of what the world should be...... Do you expect me to walk around with my rose colored glasses.... Thanks Ben and Elaine for giving us this avenue of expression. I hope that your having as much fun with it, as we are blogging.

Posted by: editor on March 4 2011 4:10 PM

Opinion 250 apologizes for the work of the technical gremlins who decided this story should be much shorter than its original posted form. We don't know why this happens, but we are trying to track down the glitch so it doesn't happen again.
Thank you for your patience.
Elaine Macdonald