Understanding the Role of a Project Manager in Construction

With a BS in civil engineering from Purdue University, Bashir Abubakar Audu serves as an assistant project manager for The Walsh Group. Bashir Audu’s responsibilities include helping to manage communications among all of the people across construction projects, from subcontractors to property owners.

The role of project manager in construction is a highly sought-after position. Charged with the broad task of managing construction projects, a project manager oversees the many moving parts of a construction project from beginning to end, including reading blueprints, budgeting payrolls, motivating workers, and scheduling the pace of work. This typically requires hiring staff, whether based on the demands of a general contractor or the manager’s own list of requisite personnel. Once the team or teams have been established, the project manager must keep them in close communication, too.

A great project manager is an expert in all areas of construction, which requires years of experience in the field. While experience is vital to the role, educational achievements, such as earning an undergraduate degree, can also make a project manager stand out when competing for high-demand projects.

MIT Researchers Developing Innovative Energy Storage Battery

A civil engineering alumnus of Purdue University, Bashir Abubakar Audu has spent the past four years as an assistant project manager with The Walsh Group. Bashir Audu previously worked as a project-controls engineer with IEA Renewable Energy and maintains an interest in sustainability.

Building upon the concept of Tesla's Powerwall, which efficiently stores energy generated from solar panels atop residential properties for future use, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is working on expanding the capacity of the technology to store enough energy to power small cities. One of the mainstream potential methods for large-scale renewable energy storage is lithium-ion batteries, but the MIT team's solution is to use giant tanks of white-hot molten silicon to store excess electricity generated by wind and solar farms, which can then be converted into electricity when necessary. 

Not only do the researchers believe it would be more cost-effective than lithium-ion batteries; they also estimate it would cost roughly half as much as hydroelectric storage, which is considered the cheapest form of effective grid-scale energy storage.

Purdue University Commits to Autonomous Vehicle R&D

Most recently an assistant project manager with the Walsh Group in Dallas, Texas, civil and construction engineering professional Bashir Abubakar Audu has an interest in renewable energy and sustainability. Prior to assuming his career as an engineer, Bashir Audu earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, considered one of the nation’s top engineering programs.

Earlier this year, Purdue announced its Discovery Park facility will be home to a new initiative focused on the research and development of autonomous vehicles. Known as the Innovation Hub for Connected and Autonomous Transportation Technologies, the partnership will be led by civil engineering professor Darcy Bullock. Multidisciplinary efforts from researchers in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, machine learning, systems engineering, advanced sensing technology, and public policy will converge to address concerns and difficulties in the autonomous vehicle market with the ultimate goal of developing and commercializing products.

Purdue will work in conjunction with professionals from the private sector, as well as public agencies like the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT). This research is a natural fit for Purdue, as the university is located in the state with the second highest automotive industry-generated GDP.

Majority of Electricity in the UK Now Drawn from Renewable Energy

Bashir Abubakar Audu is a Purdue University civil engineering graduate who most recently provided on-site management of construction projects in Dallas, Texas, through his role as an assistant project manager with The Walsh Group. Previously, Bashir Audu worked as a project controls engineer with IEA Renewable Energy, and he remains passionate about renewable energy projects and initiatives.

For the first time ever, the United Kingdom (UK) is drawing the majority of its electricity from renewable energy sources as opposed to fossil fuels. The statistics were compiled by Imperial College London and, while it isn't by a very large margin (41.9 GW compared to 41.2 GW), it represents a significant shift and step forward for the European nation. 

In the years to follow, the gap between renewable energy sources and fossil fuels should only increase as the UK government continues working toward reaching its goal of completely phasing out coal by 2025. Last year alone, coal fueled electricity-generating capacity declined by 25 percent. Moreover, the UK is the site of two of the largest wind farms in the world, while a third expected to surpass the other two in size is expected to open in 2020.

The Basics of Post-Impressionism

A civil engineer with a bachelor of science from Purdue University, Bashir Abubakar Audu serves as an assistant project manager with the Walsh Group in Dallas, Texas. Outside of the professional arena, Bashir Audu is a fan of post-impressionist art.

With origins that stretch back to the early 1880s, the art movement known as post-impressionism was born out of the work of impressionists, such as Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Post-impressionism retained elements of impressionism’s optic experimentalism, but built on them with techniques that would later serve as the foundation for cubism and abstract expressionism. Key figures in the post-impressionism movement include Paul Cezanne and Georges Seurat.

Although post-impressionism encompassed a range of individualized styles, it also shared a few defining characteristics, including a reliance on highly personal meanings and symbolism to connect with viewers on a deeper level. Also, post-impressionist painters typically used color and shape to produce optical effects that go beyond mere representation to produce a more profound expression of the world around them.