For the fourth consecutive year, the University of Maryland’s (UMD) two-day Project Management Symposium will feature a Construction Management and Building Information Modeling (BIM) session track thanks to the partnership between the Maryland Center for Construction Education & Innovation (MCCEI) and the UMD Project Management Center for Excellence. This unique partnership provides us the opportunity to build a program of direct interest to the design and construction community. MCCEI assisted in the selection of session speakers and helped identify industry professionals willing to share their experiences and lessons learned.

Taking place May 4-5, 2017, at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union on the College Park Campus of the University of Maryland, the fourth annual symposium will include more than 50 breakout sessions and five keynote presentations, including Jeff Gravatte from CADD Microsystems and Patricia Carper from The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company.

CEO and Founder of CADD Microsystems, Gravette, will kick off the two-day symposium with his keynote featuring “Technology Trends Affecting Project Management in Building Design and Construction.” Patricia Carper is currently a Vice President on-site Project Executive for the MGM project for The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company whose presentation will cover the many facets of the $1.4B development of the “MGM National Harbor Project” in Oxon Hill, MD that opened in December 2016.

The Construction Management/BIM track will span the two-day event and feature presentations on a broad range of related topics.

Jennifer Tereyla and Kenneth O’Connell with O’Connell & Lawrence, Inc. will share lessons learned from the Rocky Pen Run Reservoir dam excavation and foundation preparation project. O’Connell & Lawrence, Inc. were brought onto the project to determine who was responsible for time and cost overruns after a dispute arose between the general contractor and a specialty subcontractor.

On May 4, University of Maryland alumnus Hakob Gevorg Avetisyan, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at California State University, Fullerton, will introduce a decision support tool designed to help users allocate resources more effectively and with stakeholder guidance in mind.

The track will also feature a discussion of the process of integrating an interrelated unmanned autonomous systems (UAS)/BIM strategy to monitor the progress of a commercial project site. This presentation by Azzeddine Oudjehane and Shahab Moeini, two professors from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) in Calgary, will emphasize the application and advantages of UAS/BIM integrated systems for project progress reporting, monitoring, and inspection.

Symposium attendees will also have the opportunity to join sessions focused on people in projects, federal programs, agile/IT, integrated project management, risk and big data, education, and stakeholders. Four additional keynotes from esteemed speakers will also take place throughout the symposium: Jeff Gravatte from CADD Microsystems, Lisa Blumerman from the U.S. Census Bureau, Karl Wunderlich from Nobils, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Stephen Shinn.

“We are thrilled to be able to offer the project management community the opportunity to learn from so many industry professionals willing and eager to share their experiences and lessons learned,”,” said John H. Cable, director of the Project Management Center for Excellence. “Not only will attendees learn about big-picture opportunities in project management, but they will also hear from a variety of focus- area experts covering the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ behind many applications of project management today.”

UMD’s Project Management Center for Excellence is proud to announce that besides the Maryland Center for Construction Education & Innovation (MCCEI), other symposium sponsors related to Construction Management & BIM include Gold Sponsor The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company , Silver Sponsor Clark Construction, and Bronze Sponsors Gibane Building Company , Grimm and Parker & HITT Contracting Inc.