
Discover how a building is designed and built by breaking complex projects into bite-sized pieces, covering site utilities, structure, enclosure, interiors, and mep to accelerate your construction career.
Learn how geotechnical and structural engineers design foundations, from subsurface exploration and geotech reports to shallow and deep foundations, ensuring load transfer and controlled settlement.
Identify the owner, design team, and contractor, compare delivery systems, and outline codes, occupancy groups, construction types, CSI divisions, and major building elements guiding design.
Explore soils and subsurface conditions to understand geotech reports, soil types, water tables, and their impact on foundation design, drainage, and construction decisions.
Explore heavy construction equipment used on building sites, from scrapers and dozers to excavators, loaders, graders, and haul trucks, plus safety practices around overhead lifts and scaffolds.
Clear and grub a site by removing organic material, utilities, topsoil, and structures with heavy equipment, while protecting the public, managing erosion, and locating and de-energizing utilities.
Learn how site utilities are designed and installed, including wet and dry lines, trenching with bedding and backfill, safety, and marking tape or directional boring options.
Explore earthwork and excavation support, distinguishing mass from structural excavation, and review shoring options such as soldier beam and lagging, soil nails, sheet piles, and slurry walls.
Explore how foundations transfer loads to soil or rock, prevent excessive settlement, and distinguish shallow from deep foundations, including strip footings, mat slabs, and caissons.
Learn the components of concrete, mix design, and placement methods, including cement types, aggregates, water, admixtures, slump testing, formwork, reinforcement, curing, and common construction pitfalls.
Explore gray beams and foundation walls, their loads, lateral and uplift resistance, and the sequence from excavation to slab on grade, including damp proofing and drainage.
No matter which role you have in a building construction project, it is vital that you understand the "guts" of a building in order to make a positive impact. For contractors, engineers, architects, real estate developers and facilities managers, it takes years or even decades to learn the materials and systems in a building. The typical source of this education is on-the-job because this material is not taught in schools. Young professionals spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to understand the complexities of a modern building. Every project is different and the materials and systems can change drastically from one building to the next. Time can be better spent by adding value to projects instead of learning terminology and construction sequencing. The lessons in the course have been developed to boil down years of on-the-job training into high-impact, bite-sized classes.