NJIT Center for Building Knowledge Partners with the Newark Public School District

One critical component of delivering quality education is the provision of optimal spaces for student learning. In July of 2024, Terra Meierdierck, energy and education program manager at the Center for Building Knowledge (CBK), a research center at NJIT's Hillier College of Architecture and Design, was granted a fourth award for work with the Newark Board of Education (BOE) to support the public school district's assessment of their facilities.

The four awards cover a multi-year engagement with the Newark public school district that includes comprehensive facilities condition assessments of every school building owned by the Newark BOE, the development of a user-friendly database housing digital twins of each school building, and an evaluation of the educational adequacy of Newark Public Schools. This assessment and evaluation began in summer of 2021 with a team of students from Hillier College, and is ongoing through 2024.

"This has been a very rewarding project for everyone involved. Our student teams have engaged in experiential learning using Matterport cameras and transferring data from a point cloud into Revit to create 3D digital twins. The Newark Public Schools now have an online platform and a dataset that allows them to have digital access to every building and to prioritize facility improvements," said Meierdierck.

Team member Jennifer Lopez, M. Arch. '23 who interned with CBK as a building information specialist, appreciated the opportunity to work collaboratively with other students on tasks such as developing a template for all the building drawings that were created. "The value of working on this project with the Newark public schools is that now I am fully capable of doing a facilities condition assessment from start to finish. Also, it was more of a community service than a job, because I knew that students and teachers would have a better education with better environments," said Lopez.

Christopher Caponegro, construction management specialist and project lead for the Newark BOE, noted the importance of this project. "The goal of this assessment was to establish baseline conditions and be able to report to stakeholders where the deficiencies are and what needs to be budgeted for immediately. One thing we learned along the way is that this assessment should be done by every district, every five years, to make sure that all the facilities professionals have a snapshot of the condition of their buildings."

"Working on such an important project for the betterment of the Newark Public Schools was an enriching experience," said Marissa Gasbarro, B. Arch. '22. "As the student lead, I had the opportunity of attending meetings with the Newark Board of Education officials, working on the renderings of the new NBOE website, while also going out in the field and working with specialty equipment such as the Matterport 3D scanning camera."

To understand more about the building information technologies students utilized and the scope of this project watch the video report here.

The Center for Building Knowledge (CBK) is best known for its research and training on energy conservation measures for buildings, microgrids, energy resilience and community solar, sustainable energy transitions, building retrofits for decarbonization and the development of training and certification programs in clean energy for the state of New Jersey at the New Jersey Clean Energy Learning Center.