Robins & Morton Construction Field Lab

The three-acre field lab offers the Auburn University McWhorter School of Building Science a unique opportunity to incorporate hands-on experiential learning to complement and enhance our classroom lectures. The field lab is not just a glorified “trade school” to teach field construction techniques but meant to provide a learning environment where lessons can be reinforced by doing instead of just hearing. There are objectives developed for each class and measurement of the success in those objectives.

We are using the field lab as an operational base for BSCI 4360 Construction Field Laboratory class.  This class requires students to plan and construct a service learning project in the local community. The field lab also allows students in BSCI 3700 Construction Safety to learn field safety practices by doing those practices and ensuring the proper controls are in place on our field lab “jobsite” and in all the lab exercises we conduct.

The field lab is currently undergoing a comprehensive redevelopment thanks to a generous gift in excess of $1 million from Robins & Morton. Below are Illustrations of what the Robins & Morton Construction Field Lab will look like when the redevelopment work is completed during the Fall 2019 semester.