Civil Engineering: Sustainable Building Engineering

Aims

The aim of the programme is to develop a thorough understanding of the factors affecting to the sustainability of buildings and to provide skills to design, build and manage healthy, energy efficient and durable buildings.

Career prospects

The current requirements for both existing buildings and new constructions pose a major challenge for engineers. At the same time, buildings should be made healthier for people to live and work in, while burdening natural resources to a lesser extent.

Meeting this challenge requires new kind of professionals – sustainable building engineers. In the design phase a sustainable building engineer will, for example, compare different construction and building services (heating, ventilation, air conditioning etc.) and design to find an an optimal solution for indoor environment and energy efficiency. He/she can also assess the environmental effects of the building using environmental assessment tools such as LEED and BREEAM.

At the building site a sustainable building engineer is able to use recycled materials, minimize the waste flows and avoid causing damages to the surrounding nature. As a facility manager, he/she knows how to reduce the use of energy and other resources, and where to locate new activities in a sustainable manner.

Job placement will focus on the new low carbon and low energy sectors, serving society’s need for real sustainable development. Graduates may take export project tasks, international tasks, as well as municipal and state energy development tasks. Other fields include life cycle research, energy and environmental certification and facility management.

Subjects

This new sustainable building engineering option will offer both general building engineering skills and the understanding of the principles of life cycle engineering in buildings. The student will learn the basics of civil engineering, indoor environment and energy and skills in facility management.

The study programme contains a total of 240 credit units, including the subjects mentioned above, a few elective studies, project works, work placement and final year thesis, usually commissioned by our partners in industry. A significant part (over 60 cr) of the studies will be carried out in real working life projects, starting from the first study year. An international exchange of at least four months can be included in the third year curriculum.

Application instructions