Centers & Laboratories

College or University Centers provide the platform for substantial multi-disciplinary investigation of an area of inquiry. Centers exploit opportunities in which the complexity of the research problem or the resources needed to solve the problem require the advantages of scope, scale, duration, equipment, facilities, and students. They typically bring together faculty and students from diverse disciplines.

The Center for Innovation in Construction Safety and Health (CICSH)

A college center at Virginia Tech formed through a grant from NIOSH/CDC, the Center for Innovation in Construction Safety and Health (CICSH), is a repository of expertise, resources, and knowledge, where faculty/students and extended stakeholders congregate, collaborate, and disseminate to benefit the construction industry workers safety and health. Affiliations include: The Myers-Lawson School of Construction and The Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Sciences (ICTAS) at Virginia Tech. Affiliated Departments at Virginia Tech include: Building Construction, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Science and Mechanics, and Industrial and Systems Engineering. For more information please visit the CICSH website.

Center for Highway Asset Management Programs (CHAMPS)

Faculty and graduate students create a center of expertise to provide independent assessment and technical leadership to support innovations in maintenance contracting and asset management practices. CHAMPS provides ongoing support to Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) on matters related to the privatization of the interstate maintenance activities, innovation, and research in maintenance contracting and asset management practices.
For more information please visit the CHAMPS website.

OCHRE Laboratory

The Occupational and Construction Hazard Reduction Engineering Lab is equipped to find innovative solutions to health problems arising from the built environment and inherent to construction processes. For more information please visit the OCHRE website.

RAAMAC Laboratory

The Real-time and Automated Monitoring and Control Lab's research focuses on scientific and practical solutions to a number of critical problems in the area of automated and real-time sustainable construction performance monitoring and control. RAAMAC particular interests are in (1) creating and developing computer vision, image processing and machine learning techniques to automatically reconstruct as-built (actual) 3D and 4D building information models as well as tracking construction progress, productivity, quality, constructability and safety, and carbon footprint from static images as well as video streams; and (2) building information modeling to reason, model and visualize as-planned scenes as well as generating model-based approaches for performance comparisons. For more information please visit RAAMAC website.

Center for Leadership in Construction

A proposed Center in the Myers-Lawson School of Construction, The Center for Leadership in Construction pursues excellence in leadership education, research, and outreach for the construction industry by preparing the next generation of construction leaders, fostering a comprehensive understanding of leadership theory and practice, and transferring and exchanging knowledge among academics and industry by providing forums for exchange. The vision of the Center is to establish and sustain the premier source for leadership excellence in construction in the world. The Center's guiding principles are centered on ethical, value-based leadership with a focus on personal development, professional growth, and social responsibility.  More