[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Chae_Ben.jpg” caption=”Ben Chae, senior project superintendent for Bird Construction Company. Photo courtesy of Faculty of Engineering.”]Ben Chae (M.Eng Civ. '84) truly enjoys his job. As senior project superintendent for Bird Construction Company, Chae is responsible for the job site at McMaster's new engineering building currently under construction.

He's enjoyed being back on campus and visiting with former professors, lecturers and members of the McMaster community.

“I graduated here and it is great knowing I'm contributing to McMaster in this small way. It makes me very proud,” says Chae.

The 125,000-square-foot (11,670-square-metre) facility being constructed at the Main Street entrance of campus is proceeding quickly and is currently on schedule. The topping off ceremony on April 9 celebrated the structural completion. The building, which is registered with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System for environmental certification, is expected to be finished in late spring 2009.

Engineering 1 and the McMaster-Mohawk Bachelor of Technology (BTech) Partnership will be located in the new building. The facility will also house the School of Biomedical Engineering, the Walter G. Booth School of Engineering Practice and the research centre in nanotechnology and micro-systems.

Chae's responsibilities include ensuring that all work is done according to the drawings, coordinating all the trades and seeing that the project will be completed on time. Most important, he says, is making sure everyone works safely on the job.

“That's the biggest responsibility for the superintendent.”

Job sites are busy, noisy areas where large pieces of equipment and trucks are moving throughout. Accidents can happen to anyone, anytime, he notes.

Chae enrolled in civil engineering because he has always been fascinated with buildings. His master's thesis focused on geotechnical engineering — the study and understanding of how large buildings stay up.

The five-storey engineering building has provided a number of construction challenges. The soil in the area is unstable and the water table is high, making the soil act like quicksand when excavated. Chae credits his extensive background in geotechnical engineering with the fact that the company was able to complete the foundation successfully and quickly.

Another challenge was having to work through this past winter, which saw extremely cold temperatures and near record amounts of snow. Rather than enclose the area being worked on with special winter tarps and using large heaters to cure the concrete, the work team decided to use a special winter weather concrete mix. While the mix is more expensive, its use resulted in the project saving many thousands of dollars in heating bills. On top of that, the work was completed three weeks ahead of schedule.

A final challenge for Chae is the fact that the design is being done via sequential tendering.

“I can only picture a small area at a time, making it difficult to coordinate the whole project,” he says.

Chae recalls his student days as being “all work, work!” He arrived from South Korea with a BA in agriculture and engineering and, in addition to the usual M.Eng workload, the University required him to take some refresher undergraduate courses.

“I didn't get many hours of sleep,” he jokes. Since graduating, he has worked only with construction firms, joining Bird Construction in 1990.

Chae and his wife live in Brampton, and they have two adult sons. When not worrying about the safety of his construction crew, he relaxes by gardening and playing golf.