Reflection

Part of this portfolio is a reflection on the portfolio plan and the execution of this plan.

Programme:

Because I couldn’t follow four of my  chosen courses, I didn’t succeed in acquiring knowledge in four different disciplines of the building process. Fortunately, because of my job at Nelissen Ingenieursbureau I saw a lot of these different disciplines next to my study.

Thanks to my M1 project, 7N208 and 7S320 I succeeded in gaining more experience in cooperation with other people and disciplines. This experience is helpful in the field because building projects are very complex projects with a lot of different perspectives and people.

Also more in-depth building physical knowledge is gained by following the 7S320 (building safety) course.

Thanks to my M2 and M3 project I can say that research projects suits me. I really like being busy with experiments of which the results aren’t really known yet, so to contribute to the knowledge on this planet.

But I also like creating new concepts and/or building plans in which creativity, experience, knowledge and cooperation lead to good (in any way) building project results.

This matches my earlier thought that I liked both of these approaches in building engineering. With the chosen portfolio plan I tried to find which of those elements suits me best, but I think I will find my way in both of them. I think I will learn it in practice.

Competency development:

Unfortunately I didn’t succeed in performing a sustainable design (SET) project, but based on the courses I followed and my work at Nelissen Ingenieursbureau I have formed a relative clear picture of this area of interest. However, this doesn’t bring me closer to my goal to know which way to go: acoustics or sustainable design.

In the practical field of activity, sustainable design is a rather large area, where the purely acoustical field is quite small.

I did succeed in gaining more knowledge in acoustics and the building process as a whole. The increase in knowledge and experience in the field of acoustics is primarily the result of the followed courses and the chosen (M1, M3/graduation) projects. My work at Nelissen Ingenieursbureau is greatly responsible for the increase in knowledge and experience in the building design process.

Planning:

Despite a rather large change in chosen optional course elements, I didn’t deviate much from my intentional planning. Instead of graduating in q3 of academic year ‘11/’12, the planning is that I will graduate in q4 of the same academic year.

During my academic study (both bachelor and master) I always took care of a good organization of courses and projects I wanted to follow in order to  obtain the best workable schedule, both in efficiency and feasibility.