At the beginning of March, I had the pleasure to speak with approximately 120 Virginia Tech students about the land development industry as part of the university’s Land Development Design Initiative (LDDI).

LDDI is a collaborative effort between the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and industry practitioners to improve land development design education as well as increase student awareness of the industry. The curriculum is run through the university but financed through sponsorships from organizations like Dewberry, a platinum sponsor.

LDDI holds several sponsor/student events per year, including the previously mentioned presentation in March. In addition to an intro of Dewberry, I talked about the land development work we do and ran through a presentation on a local Wal-Mart project we completed. This presentation was actually the exact same one we gave to our client. I wanted to give the students a real glimpse into the project process.

After speaking with the students, I was quite impressed with not only the LDDI curriculum, but also their level of questioning and interest in the industry. This was my first interaction with the students and LDDI program, but hopefully won’t be my last!