Student spotlight: David Wichman

David Wichman is a College of Engineering student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) who will soon be a project engineer for a general contractor in Rockford after graduation next month. His studies focus specifically on construction management and transportation engineering. 

David got a taste of playing that part when he worked as a construction engineering intern at Ringland-Johnson Construction this past summer. While at the Cherry Valley-based company, he worked on estimates, schedule building, and time-cost control, among other skills.“My interest in transportation was first sparked during a mission trip to Haiti. One of the main goals during the trip was to improve the road quality from small mountain villages to the country’s capital, Porte-au-Prince,” Wichman said. “The growth and health of these communities were extremely dependent on the transportation systems. This experience drove me to pursue an education where I could someday play a part in the design or construction of better transportation systems here in the United States.”

David also worked as a civil engineering intern at Civil Engineering Services in Belvidere, Illinois, and as a city engineer intern in his hometown of Freeport, Illinois. In addition, he spent time at the Advanced Transportation and Engineering Laboratory (ATREL) as an undergraduate research assistant under Dr. Hasan Ozer and Dr. Imad Al-Qadi where he helped contribute to project R27-189, “Evaluation of Data Trends and Variability in the Quality for Performance (QCP) and Pay for Performance (PFP) Programs.”

“With this project, we aimed to determine why and where hot-mix asphalt pavements quality targets were missed according to previous years’ data and surveys of asphalt production plants,” David said. “My small part during this project help reinforce the importance of construction and material quality in our transportation system so its life span and cycle can be optimized.”

David has also worked on other engineering projects, including one that focused on off-campus parking for UIUC employees and another that focused on UIUC football game traffic flow and parking.

“One of the most important things that I have learned here at UIUC is that the quality of construction is crucial for meeting the design goals of construction. Ensuring our infrastructure is built correctly and according to design helps increase its life-cycle and ultimately improves the long-term health of our infrastructure,” David said. “As a project engineer, I hope to implement the many skills I have developed here at UIUC to help ensure and improve the quality of our infrastructure.”