Last year, Professor Laura J. Steinberg from Syracuse University in New York, used iWorQ’s applications to assist in teaching her Urban Infrastructure class. With iWorQ, Dr. Steinberg and her students evaluated and assessed the streets and signs in Syracuse neighborhoods. The students learned about asset management, how you track your assets with a modern software system, and how it helps city leaders with tracking and decision making.
Jackie Martinez, a senior in the civil engineering course, was one of the students who benefitted from Dr. Steinberg’s class. She and other students were taking their Senior Design class and were given the task to evaluate a damaged neighborhood and establish proposals to rehabilitate the area for the City of Syracuse.
Jackie decided iWorQ would work perfectly for her research and presentation. After her senior project was completed, we chatted with Jackie and asked about her experience with iWorQ.
Interview with Jackie
Please detail this project. What did it consist of?
My senior design team was given a project to develop ideas and designs in the efforts to revitalize a neighborhood in Syracuse, NY called the Hawley-Green neighborhood. Because this was a very conceptual project in comparison to the other projects that were available to the other teams, we had to limit our ideas to a few key projects that we believed would have the greatest impact. This included a park design, the implementation of bike lanes and a roundabout, small business developments, wall murals and road rehabilitation.
Why did you choose iWorQ to help in your senior project?
Dr. Laura Steinberg was teaching us about asset management when it comes to urban infrastructure and had Garyn, iWorQ’s CEO, Skype in to talk to us about iWorQ and what he does. We had a project following his introduction; to characterize and evaluate the roads around the Syracuse University campus. This project was interesting and iWorQ was useful in asset management that I wondered why engineering did not put a bigger focus on its importance. When my team toured the Hawley-Green neighborhood for our Senior Design project and I saw the condition of the roads there, I immediately knew that iWorQ would be useful for our research and our design.
How did iWorQ help in this project?
iWorQ helped us evaluate the roads in Hawley-Green. Through iWorQ, we followed the quick and easy steps of characterizing the road condition based on severity of cracks. This determined the remaining service life for these roads. The remaining service life chart was something that really impacted us, the people in the community that we presented to, and our judges. To have a visual representation of the poor condition of the roads was eye-opening and compelled the public to want to do better. iWorQ was also able to give an estimation of the cost breakdown to rehabilitate the roads very easily and gave the judges a realistic idea of what had to be done. iWorQ was quick, it was accessible and efficient.
What was the result of the senior project?
My team won the award for “Best Senior Design Presentation” and I was told later that it had to do with the research that iWorQ helped with. In a way, iWorQ won as well!
