Best Master Thesis
Fabrizios thesis was awarded a ’Best Master Thesis’ – an honour which is awarded to the best master’s thesis. At first the thesis is marked and thereafter the student has to defend the thesis in front of an ’examination board’ where both the university and the company are represented. It is the ’examination board’ which assesses which student is honoured with the title ’Best Master Thesis’. “Obviously I was very happy to be awarded. It is at huge professional recognition and I competed against many other and very talented master students”, tells Fabrizio about his reaction of being honoured.
VIA Campus Horsens is cooperating with seven different European universities in order to offer the master programme ‘European Construction Engineering’. Formally, the master programme is offered at the university in Santander – university colleges are not allowed to offer master programmes, but they can be responsible for parts of the lessons. This is what VIA Campus Horsens does.
Full-time modules in four months
The programme is organised so the students are to complete three full-time modules, each in four months. The students are four months in Santander, four months at VIA Campus Horsens and finally they can choose four months at VIA or one of the seven universities which are a part the partnership.
There are four master programme teachers at VIA Campus Horsens. They are teaching construction management, construction counselling and sustainable construction. The master students are happy to be in Horsens, both because of the high quality of teaching and because they have been received well: ”The feedback we get from students, is that they love to study in Horsens. We get great response to our teaching and when they are arriving we are very well prepared so they can spend time on their projects and not all the practical circumstances. At the same time, Danish companies are great at working innovative and constructive with the students”, tells Bo Riisbjerg Thomsen who is the head of the programme Architectural Technology and Construction Management at VIA Campus Horsens and teaches at the master programme.
Great cooperation with RAMBØLL
In the master thesis, it was important to Fabrizio to work with an actual project and not at theoretical example. And with Bo Riisbjerg Thomsen as intermediary, Fabrizio got in contact with project manager Lars Hededal from Rambøll which is working with Green Innovation House in Vejle. The Green Innovation House project is a Green Tech construction which among others shall demonstrate and commercialise products and services from the involved environment and energy companies.
In connection with the Green Innovation House construction, Fabrizio especially worked with the buildings main constructions in order to examine the construction materials’ environmental impact e.g. what the environmental impacts are if the constructions are built in respectively concrete, wood and steel. Fabrizio examined the buildings CO2 impact – both the impact during the construction, while the building is in use and when the construction materials someday will be decomposed, Lars Hededal: “Fabrizio’s work has contributed to our understanding of the different construction materials seen from an energy and environmental point of view. He has also assessed the materials from an engineering point of view with focus on stability and strength. And that has been a huge inspiration to get fresh eyes and new inputs about which materials we can use in constructions as Green Innovation House. We wish to create new buildings which both in construction and in daily use consume minimal amount of energy ”.
Working environment and environmental impact
Another focus in Fabrizios examinations was the working environment in connection with the construction. He among others analysed how the use of different construction materials is affecting the wear of the construction workers. To build with bricks is one of the materials which cause great wear because there is a lot of manual work combined with it. On the other hand, working with concrete panels is not causing that much wear because the construction workers use mashines to handle the concrete panels. Fabrizio: ”It is interesting to examine how different materials influence the construction work. It is both about the environmental impact, short term and long term, and the impact the construction workers are exposed to. The more parameters we are measuring, the better a picture we get of a construction’s entire environmental impact and energy consumption. We are examining buildings whole in their expected life cycle. One thing is that most agree that it is positive to build low-energy buildings. But if they at the same time cost a lot of energy to build, in materials which are expensive to decompose and if the working environment during the construction cause great wear for the construction workers, the complete accounts are more expensive than at first sight.”
Denmark is far ahead regarding low-energy houses
Fabrizio’s choice of Denmark and an advisor from VIA Campus Horsens for his master’s thesis was made because Denmark is working a lot with low-energy houses. Therefore, the focus is on how to find and work with the most energy-friendly solutions. Fabrizio: “Denmark and Germany are the countries which are furthest ahead in the work with low-energy houses. That was one of my motivations for choosing Denmark. At the same time I was so lucky that RAMBØLL was very open and helped me with a lot of information for my thesis. It was a great help.”
In the longer run Fabrizio hopes to return to Denmark to work, both because he thinks working with working environments and environmental impacts are exciting, but also because he loves Denmark and Danes.