Laurentian opens doors to collaborative innovation centre: University's Cliff Fielding building will be campus hub of engineering expertise.

• Author: McKinley, Karen
• Position: Training & Education

The new home of Laurentian University's engineering department opened its doors Sept. 10, welcoming everyone to a new era of partnerships and innovation.

Of all the features in the new Cliff Fielding Research, Innovation and Engineering Building, one has been there for billions of years.

The 60,000-square-foot building is the new home of Laurentian's Bharti School of Engineering. Situated between the Fraser and Parker buildings at the Sudbury campus, it's specifically designed to be a bright, airy welcoming space for anyone walking into the building.

For everyone involved, it means much more room to work. All the equipment is in one central location, new features help students and researchers with developing their projects and partnerships and, ultimately, make the university a hub for innovation across multiple disciplines.

"Not only is this an incubation space, it's a place that will provide expertise to help young entrepreneurs develop that spirit within themselves," said Sheila Mendes, capital projects manager for the university.

The building took just two years to construct, starting in the fall of 2016. It consists of three levels, with four capstone innovation labs (where students build a working project based on their acquired knowledge and skills), a material analysis lab, an environmental and soil mechanics lab, a prototype development and machine shop, an integrated software lab, and a hydraulics and fluid mechanics lab.

The building's design blends into the natural features of the rock walls that make up the university's campus. One area really takes advantage of the environment for aesthetics and instruction. Construction crews left a rock wall exposed for students to get a visual idea of what their careers will entail.

Greg Lakanen, a mechanical engineering technologist, said it is a perfect setting for experimenting and pays homage to the rich mining heritage in the city and the university.

"It's fitting this is the space where we have our material testing in here," he said. "We do concrete testing, rock mechanics, failure of bolts. This is the kind of room space where they will be testing their projects. This has natural material, which half of our students will be working with."

The importance of the building, he said, is that it's a place where engineering students of all disciplines can work in their own spaces, but still collaborate without being in each other's way.

The engineering department was housed mostly in the...