With sustainability at its core, Civil Engineering students exhibit models at Pulchowk Campus

  • January 24, 2020

A flyover model for Koteshwor road.

Civil Engineering Students Association organized a civil engineering exhibition in the premises of Pulchowk Engineering Campus, starting from today and to last till Sunday. Students pursuing Bachelors of Civil Engineering (B.E) in several colleges and universities are participating in the exhibition, and presenting their unique ideas.

Institute of Engineering, Pulchowk Campus commonly known as Pulchowk Engineering Campus is one of the five major campuses of the Tribhuvan University. The civil engineering students from different engineering colleges and universities of Nepal today demonstrated their projects and ideas. Most of the projects were focused on improving Nepal’s infrastructure, in many of them, sustainability its core.

All projects are uniquely created with a mindset to improve the living standards of the Nepali community. Participants created and presented their building structures, highway connecting roads, underground roadways, water treatment plant, construction of dams, paving tiles made of plastic, and so on.

According to a volunteer in this exhibition, “The students from different college used their knowledge to create their own models, thinking that their projects will bring positive change in society as well as daily life of citizens. Their projects should be applauded.”

The exhibition has set a voting method where one can visit exhibition stalls, observe the project and vote for the project that they like the most. Each project and participants get a stall number to make it easier for the voting procedure.

The team who gets voted the most will get a cash prize of 28,000. As per Civil Engineering Students Association, they are planning present the most appropriate project in front of government and other organizations – the project might be implemented if approved.

The representative team of Kathmandu Engineering College, second year B.E. students, created a model of underground parking in Tundikhel, Sundhara. Anil Rai, the speaker of the team said, “Tundikhel is a public land and it might come handy for public. This underground parking can solve most of the traffic-related problem in the area.”

“It is almost impossible to find a parking space around Sundhara area. Our underground parking idea will provide parking space for 2000 two-wheelers and 1,000 four-wheelers. This, on a long run, will be beneficial for the economy of country.” he said.

The idea of building parking lots at Tundikhel, Lainchaur, Tinkune and Dharmapath to reduce traffic jam in the capital was proposed by Kathmandu Metropolitan City in 2016, the models are implementation of the same. The-then spokesperson Gyanendra Karki had even announced the allocated budget for the projects.

A budget of Rs 3 billion has been allocated for the construction of an underground parking lot at Lainchaur, Rs 4 billion for the parking lot at Tundikhel , and Rs 1 billion for the Tinkune parking lot. However, the cost estimate and design of the parking lot at Dharmapath was not prepared.

Other projects such as utilization of rain water for household purposes, solar energy as an alternative for electricity, fly-over in busy areas of capital and construction models for different government organization were also quite remarkable.

There also was a lack of ideas and projects that focused in the development of rural areas and other places outside Kathmandu Valley.

“Civil engineers need to balance frequently conflicting objectives, such as determining the feasibility of plans with regard to financial costs and safety concerns,” said the speaker of team participating from Cosmos College, Kathmandu. The team gave a presentation on earthquake resistant building structures.

“We used the principles of calculus, trigonometry, and other advanced topics in mathematics for analysis, design and troubleshooting in our work.” he added.

(Reporter: Feenzu Sherpa)