Voices Magazine Vol3 Issue 2

9 August - September 2019 | VOICES Bi-Monthly Magazine of the University of Technology, Jamaica Cont’d from page 8... CSA Supports Gov’t’s Vernamfield Development Senior advisor and consultant to minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister, Mike Henry, Bindley Sangster (left), listens as Neville Plummer, Master of Architecture student, CSA explains the concept behind his final-year project. the Caribbean. It is a hub for research on towns and cities of the Caribbean. Project manager for the Vernamfield development, Lieutenant Colonel Oscar Derby, told JIS News that the administration is looking at the CSA to “help us in formulating our plans and to build out our airport and all the structures around it that will be networked to the airport”. “We believe that UTech offers a skill and a capacity that will help us and reduce the extent to which we have to go overseas for the kind of expertise that we need in the development of the area. This will enable it (the project) to be pretty much Caribbean or Jamaican in its look when it is done,” he adds. Lt Col Derby says the project team is of the belief that the proposed engagement is a good opportunity for young people to bring their creativity to a major development. “We found out that the environment here at UTech includes elements that can be of critical importance in our planning stages and in our development, and we’d much rather give every opportunity to what we have here at home, than the expensive need to outsource outside of Jamaica,” he says. Architect, Jacquiann T Lawton, Head of the CSA, told JIS News that she welcomes the collaboration noting that the students possess the extensive knowledge of urban renewal that the Vernamfield project requires. “We have the skill sets in terms of how our students approach notions of increased densities to provide that kind of development planning,” she notes. Dean of the Faculty of The Built Environment, Dr. Garfield Young, explains that at the faculty, which also houses the School of Building and Land Management, students are taught urban planning, land surveying and geographic information sciences, construction management, structural engineering, and quantity surveying. These are all the elements needed for any kind of urban infrastructural development, he notes. “This is where you would find the persons who would be engaged from the planning stage to the implementation stage of any project like Vernamfield or anywhere else in Jamaica or the world. So, it’s the right place to come to see the potential that resides right here in our country,” he says. Architectural students are also welcoming the proposed collaboration. Master of architecture final-year student, Kenrick Baksh, is of the opinion that it is “an excellent idea to help connect students to the work in the field”. “I think it helps to bridge that gap… In the Caribbean, it is not often you find that the Government will reach out directly to students, so I think it’s a good approach,” he told JIS News.