Chicago Meeting Minutes

2nd Working Group meeting, October 21st 2010

Prepared by Dario Trabucco
Revised by Sabina Fazlic, Karel Vollers and Javier Quintana de Uña
Additional comments by Professor Sang Dae Kim and by Philip Oldfield
Meeting Attendees:
Abbas Aminmansour
Roy Denoon
Mattew Herman
Julie Hirimoto
Nicholas Holt
Javier Quintana de Uña
Dario Trabucco
Karel Vollers
Minute Contents:
1 - Discussion on the group’s activities
2 - Discussion on the strategies to move the group forward
3 - Decision on the next meeting date / venue

1. Discussion on the Group’s Activities
Subgroup #1: Steering and Direction
The group will be asked to coordinate by e-mail in the period following the Chicago Meeting, inputting on the meeting results and discussing the general management of the group.

Subgroup #2: Internships and Scholarships
Description of Subgroup:
Investigating the possibilities to establish internship and scholarship programs between the academia and the industry, e.g. placement of undergraduate or PhD students in architectural practice, or placement of professionals in university departments for certain periods.

Subgroup leader: Jason Pomeroy   

Advancement status:
The group created a well-defined proposal for starting internship programs, partly based on the leader’s personal experience at Broadway Malyan. The proposal of the sub-group is to start identifying architectural and engineering professionals who can recruit interns in order to tighten the relationship between students, researchers and professionals. The priority of the activity in this phase was focused on internships. The possibility for scholarships has not been apparently addressed.

Discussion during the meeting:
The project seems interesting and feasible. The proposal is for the CTBUH acting as facilitator of internship and scholarship programs. A number of services would be provided. First, a web link within the CTBUH web page where practices could post their internship opportunities and candidates would obtain information for their application. Second, the Council would define a very basic protocol  to ensure these practices comply with a minimum set of quality requirements. The Council could, for example, establish a common format for students to send their CVs and portfolios and can ask practitioners to sign an agreement to ensure a minimum didactic and scientific quality of the intern program. This would ensure students that the firm where they are preparing to work is reliable.

Effort asked from the Council to put this activity in place:
-    Promotional activity through the newsletter and web page.
-    Creation of web link specific for the program.
-    Creation of a “protocol” document.

Comments from Prof. Sang Dae Kim:
Maybe the Council could act as the middle person/organization to introduce the internship program to students all over the world, and we could also introduce intern students to firms such as SOM, Arup, etc. What I do currently at Korea Univ is to send a student to Arup Hong Kong in each summer and winter break as an intern. This has been possible because I am interchanging with Arup Hong Kong personally. For example, maybe there is a student in Tokyo Univ who wants to have this kind of experience and his professor cannot do the role, we may replace the role.

Scholarship requires a fund as you know. I would like to request the plans from you on how and where to achieve the fund. What I have been planning in a long term is something like “Lynn S. Beedle – Turner Scholarship”. The scholarship will be made in memory of the first Chairman of the Council, and Turner would pay for it. We may create scholarships by other names. The issue is to find companies who would financially support the scholarship.


Subgroup #3: Professional Development and Program of Education
Description of Subgroup:
Investigating opportunities for continuing professional development courses and programs of regular education for recent graduates and professionals, e.g. summer-schools, focused seminars and masters courses, etc.

Subgroup leader: Javier Quintana de Uña, IE University

Advancement status:
The group performed a complete survey on existing education programs in tall buildings at the various levels. The outcome points to a great variability of existing programs, with almost no connection and coordination (except recent CTBUH-leaded activities). No programs seem to exist for professionals.

A proposal is to fill these gaps, creating two courses:
- first, a student and recent grads level course (“Skyscraper: Fundamentals”)
- second, a professional level, executive format course (“Skyscraper: Advanced”).
The courses should be based at CTBUH-institution member and be accredited by the Council.
This offer would be completed with less professionally oriented courses such as Summer Schools or lecture series on tall building design.

Discussion during the meeting:
The creation of student courses validated directly by the CTBUH seems quite difficult to achieve, but the Council should be able to repeat the positive experience from the Masters course at the University of Nottingham. The primary task would be to identify which CTBUH-related institutions could design and house the programs. On the other hand, the creation of a high-level professional course would be very interesting and potentially remunerative for the Council.

As part of the discussion, the creation a “CTBUH tall buildings course” for teachers and academics is proposed as an in-between option for student courses and the professional one. Through participation at this course, lasting 2 or 3 weeks, the lecturer can gain an accreditation for teaching a CTBUH-accredited course in his own university. In the meantime, the possibility of organizing a summer school program is being explored by two sub-group participants.

Effort asked from the Council to put this activity in place:
-    Help in the identification of topics for the courses and selection of speakers.
-    Promotional activity for the courses (web, CTUBH symposiums, etc.).
-    Accreditation of courses.

Comments by Prof. Sang Dae Kim:
-    I would like you to organize detailed plans for the summer school so that we could start this program from June 2011 if possible.
-    We should both look at the graduate program as well. A joint program between CTBUH, IIT, Nottingham Univ, Korea Univ, and Tongji Univ (in Shanghai) should be planned and reviewed.
-    A program for general engineers will be started in Korea. We will learn from the fruits and problems from this and we may apply the result to other programs in the future.

Subgroup #4: Academic and Professional Virtual Consultancy / Expert Panel
Description of Subgroup:
Developing a (web-based) platform for advising professionals, researchers and corporations on topics related to high rise structures and fostering collaboration between specialists in high rise buildings.

Subgroup leader: Maciej Cichy

Advancement status:
The group is ready to create a list of individuals, to be hosted on the CTBUH website, to provide expert consultancy on topics related to tall buildings. The group has already prepared a draft of a form to collect information about the individuals joining the expert panel.

Discussion during the meeting:
The name of the subgroup may have distracted the attendees in Chicago from the real intended outputs of the sub-group, thinking that the sub-group was intended to create a group of people that give professional consultancy on behalf of the Council. In order to avoid any further misunderstanding, it has to be stated that the sub-group objective is to identify the strategies to create something like a “tall building yellow pages” database where individuals can promote their own expertise through a database, with no connection at all with the Council. This activity falls within the activity of another sub-group (n° 5, Tall Buildings research database).

On the other hand, it was noted that the database of individuals can be used by the Council as an “internal” expert panel, for instance for peer-reviewing papers, seeking advice on research proposals, creation of commission and so on. The sub-group is asked to coordinate with sub-group n° 5, providing data for the implementation of a tall building research database.

Effort asked from the Council to put this activity in place:
-    Information on actions related to subgroup #5.
-    To create a legal disclaimer to protect the Council itself from all the activities of individuals present in the “yellow-pages” database and to protect the individuals from all free information provided.

Comments by Prof. Sang Dae Kim:
-    I do like the idea of “a web-based platform “tall building yellow pages” database.
-    This WG is asked to coordinate closely with group n° 5.

Subgroup #5: Tall Buildings research database
Description of Subgroup:
The planning and creation of a researcher / research project database, which may be based on initial information collated from research abstracts and may have social networking capabilities. The group will also examine the opportunities available for a proposed research section of the CTBUH newsletter, which could include funding opportunities / alerts, calls for papers, conferences, scholarships, etc.

Subgroup leader: Karel Vollers

Advancement status:
The group is exploring different technical possibilities for the creation of a comprehensive database on the research activity related to tall buildings.
The group presented various solutions for different levels of technical and workforce availability. Two options exist for the management (and then the structure of the database):
-    Top-down: all the data searched, created, and inputted by the managers of the web-site. This strategy assures the quality of the published information, though it requires more labour.
-    Bottom-up: all the data is published by users. This requires very little labour from the Council but it doesn’t ensure the quality of the published content.

Discussion during the meeting:
It is clear that this subgroup has a key role in the whole group’s activity, gathering the outputs of most of the other sub-groups and helping in the dissemination activity.  The discussion focused on the two main strategies and the idea of a bottom-up strategy was preferred, at least for the initial phase. However, in order to ensure quality, a rating system has to be created, so as to allow the users of the website to rank its content. A “veto” option is to be reserved for CTBUH staff. A final decision on this has is to be sought as soon as possible, as a consequence of the instrumental importance of the achievement and dissemination of the other subgroup’s results.

Effort asked from the Council to put this activity in place:
-    Staff support to create a website and to maintain it
-    Web resources

This sub-group is considered to be fundamental in the achievement of the WG's objectives. The sub group members are asked to present a specific list of their needs, to be presented to the trustees.

Subgroup #6: Recognising Research Excellence
Description of Subgroup: An examination of how the CTBUH could recognise and award research excellence. Possible activities include an award for ‘Best Research Paper’ and a student competition for tall building design projects.

Subgroup leader: missing

Advancement status:
The sub-group has proven to be inactive since the Venice meeting. An end to this group is proposed, and a redirection of the efforts to group #9 (Journal).

Subgroup #7: Funding Potential of the CTBUH
Description of Subgroup:
Subgroup #7 is chartered with the task of reviewing the fundamental potential of the CTBUH. The sub-group will undertake an examination of how the CTBUH could act as a funding body itself, providing, for example, seed capital to research projects or obtaining commercial sponsorship for research projects.

Subgroup leader: Lester Partridge

Advancement status:
The group prepared a report where different possibilities for the CTBUH to become a funding body are assessed. The group identified two main strategies:
-    the Council provides (full/partial) economic support to research.
-    the Council acts as a facilitator of the research process only.
The main difference lays in the economic availability of funds from the CTBUH to support the research activity. In the first case the Council can provide only seed capital or cover the entire research costs by using funds from corporate memberships or external sponsors. In the second case, the Council can just facilitate the divulgation of external research, i.e.  covering costs for conference attendance of PhD students.

Comments by Prof. Sang Dae Kim:
-    I think the Council should plan for estimated costs and provide the seed money. If you could give the Trustees the detailed suggestion we will talk about it at the Trustees meeting.
-    I suggest you to research on another funding solution idea which is to find what we could provide to a company, like Hyundai Construction & Engineering, as the output from the research fund as much as one half to one million dollars. A company will support the project with no hesitation if they are promised to benefit from a good output.

Subgroup #8: Audit of Other Bodies/Countries
Description of Subgroup:
The objective of the Audit of Other Bodies/Countries subgroup is to review the activities of other organisations relating to the advancement of the Research, Academic and Postgraduate Working Group objectives and develop strategy and forum for collaboration. The subgroup will research platforms and methods of advancement in different countries and prepare a method to tie the interest of the CTBUH research group with other bodies.

Subgroup leader: Abbas Aminmansour

Advancement status:
The sub-group has not presented an advancement status at the Chicago meeting.

Subgroup #9: CTBUH Journal
Description of Subgroup:
The objective of the CTBUH Journal subgroup is to examine the existing CTBUH Journal in regards to research dissemination, linking academics with industry and establishing a forum for a quality research publication section. Also, it aims to determine the type, quality and frequency of research publications and investigate the need for the Journal to be indexed. It is to establish a link between the existing CTBUH Journal and the Research, Academic and Postgraduate Working group.

Subgroup leader: Seifu Bekele

Advancement status:
The sub-group has not presented an advancement status at the Chicago meeting. An updated report is expected by the end of November.

Comments by Prof. Sang Dae Kim:
-    I am definitely interested in the research journal. I believe that a research journal is a must to make the Council’s activity more diverse.  I will be submitting a proposal for this research journal as it is required to have an approval from Trustees. But we also need a Committee to revise before getting the approval. It will help the Trustees very much to read what the Committee members’ opinion is to make a decision.

Subgroup #10: CTBUH as a Lobbying Institution
Description of Subgroup:
Examining how the CTBUH could act as a lobbying institution, for example, approaching research bodies to make more finance available for research and development relating to tall buildings.

Advancement status:
The sub-group has proven to be inactive since the meeting in Venice.

An end of this group is proposed. The lobbying potential will be assessed by other CTBUH members.


2 - Discussion on the strategies to have the group moving forward

Some attendees in Chicago remarked on the general lack of activity from many subgroup members and expressed a desire to find other members to attain the groups’ goals.

The need for meeting opportunities was emphasized, so as to maintain a high level of participation among members. On the other hand, the difficulty of participation at meetings for overseas members was underlined and virtual meetings were identified as a possible solution to this problem. Each subgroup was encouraged to organize its own virtual meetings. It was explicitly stated that each subgroup can act as an independent body and it can eventually organize internal events under the responsibility of the subgroup leader.

The leaders of the sub-groups that are inactive will be asked to express their willingness to keep their sub-group in place. In case of negative answers the groups will be dismantled.


3 - Decision on the next meeting date / venue

The next “CTBUH Research, Academic and Postgraduate” Working Group meeting is proposed to be held in conjunction with the next CTBUH conference, to be held in Seoul in October 2011. The meeting is expected to be a large event, with the same shape and format of the first meeting held in Venice in June 2010. During this event, all sub-groups are expected to provide a final output of their work, providing in some cases also a description of the activities accomplished (ie: summer school, internship programs, etc.) so that a possible reiteration can be assessed.

However, some members noted that such a long period between two meetings can be potentially harmful to the functioning of the working group. For this reason a possible mid-term meeting is proposed by Nicholas Holt to take place at the SOM offices in New York. This meeting is possibly dedicated to sub-group leaders only, though participation may be left open to all those who wish to attend anyway, subject to space availability (limited to 25 seats). The meeting can ideally take place at the end of March when flight fares may be lower that during other periods of the year. The meeting can be shaped so as to allow some visits to SOM projects in New York, such as the WTC Tower 1, etc.

Further information on this third meeting will be provided soon.