With their innovative design solutions for structure and construction of a large-scale “Hospital, High-End Apartment, & Education Complex”, the graduation project by Truong Huu Phuoc and Ton That Lap from the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the DTU School of Engineering & Technology (SET) won a second prize at the 2024 Loa Thanh awards.
This was the highest prize awarded in the category of Engineering & Technology, graded by the Vietnam Construction Association, at this year’s Loa Thanh awards. It highlights the exceptional capabilities and creative thinking of DTU’s Civil Engineering graduates as they enter the workforce.
The Loa Thanh awards are organized by the Vietnam Construction Association, the Vietnam Association of Architects, the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, and the Ministry of Construction. They are prestigious awards for outstanding graduation projects by final-year students at institutions offering architecture & construction training nationwide. This year, the awards attracted 193 submissions from 22 universities for a lively and high-quality competition.
Truong Huu Phuoc and Ton That Lap from DTU won second prize at the 2024 Loa Thanh awards
The projects were divided into six categories:
- Architecture & Planning,
- Civil & Industrial Construction,
- Traffic Engineering,
- Hydraulic Engineering,
- Infrastructure Engineering & Urban Environment, and
- Construction Economics & Management.
The projects were diverse in themes and stood out for their focus on sustainability, green construction, renewable-energy use, and cultural-heritage use & preservation. They addressed practical demands through scientific approaches and professional presentations.
Competing in the most challenging category that is Civil & Industrial Construction, Truong Huu Phuoc and Ton That Lap from DTU left a splendid impression at the 2024 Loa Thanh awards and won a distinguished second prize with their joint project “Hospital, High-End Apartment, & Education Complex”.
The two DTU students with their lecturers and second prize-winning graduation project
The project was based on preliminary architectural designs by the Danang Urban Planning Institute during the completion of a 1:500-scale master plan. The complex, with an area of 21,311 m², counts three underground floors, 29 above-ground floors, and many complex items:
- a hospital,
- luxury apartments, and
- offices and classrooms.
Faced with complex construction conditions, a huge scale, and high technical requirements, Truong Huu Phuoc and Ton That Lap creatively applied their specialized knowledge to come up with structure & construction solutions and meet practical demands.
- Structural solutions: They opted for modern and feasible methods like pre-stressed flat slabs, transfer beams, shear walls, barrette walls, and large-load bored piles. These complex techniques require a thorough understanding of mechanics, structures, foundations, materials, and national standards, in addition to a proficiency in specialized software.
- Construction solutions: Beyond conventional technologies, a highlight of the project is its proposal of an optimized deep underground construction design solution that combines diaphragm walls with the semi top-down method, ensuring construction feasibility and efficiency. Furthermore, the judges highly appreciated the separation and control of a large volume of tasks for overall construction progress.
“Hospital, High-End Apartment, & Education Complex” won the DTU students a second prize
Besides clear structural design solutions, the two DTU students’ graduation project also took practical concerns of domestic and international production into account by proposing feasible construction approaches that save both cost and time. For their project, they used modern software like Revit, AutoCAD, Etabs, SAFE, Adapt, and Plaxis 2D for modeling, analysis, and calculations to ensure scientific, aesthetic, and practical requirements were met. Notably, the students integrated Building Information Modeling (BIM) into their project, a cutting-edge method in the digital transformation that meets the current need for innovation in the construction industry.
Truong Huu Phuoc is open-minded and sociable, and he loves reading, singing, and sports. Reflecting on his academic journey, Phuoc shares that, when he graduated from high school, he wished for a knowledge-rich academic environment suited to the discipline of his choice. Lucky to have chosen DTU, he had access to modern facilities, made good friends, and studied with enthusiastic teachers with high professional qualifications. “That’s why I feel really fortunate and grateful that I could study here,” he says.
Detailed design of the project “Hospital, High-End Apartment, & Education Complex”
Ton That Lap, a sociable, energetic, and cheerful boy, lives by the inspirational motto: “Success is a journey, not a destination.” He decided to pursue Civil Engineering at DTU because it is the largest private university in Central Vietnam and it has modern facilities and top teaching quality. “I entrusted a part of my youth to this university, and to this day, I still believe it was the right choice,” he states.
“This year, the judges went for projects with high practical application and alignment with international trends or pressing domestic needs, such as green buildings, reduction of carbon emissions, AI applications in material manufacturing, and BIM integration,” Faculty of Civil Engineering Dean MSc Nguyen Quoc Lam remarked. “Besides stringent technical requirements, award-winning projects must also address contemporary demands in the context of the need for interdisciplinary scientific research. DTU’s prize at this year’s Loa Thanh awards shows how the DTU Faculty of Construction’s training strategy of innovating the program towards experimentation, improvement of soft skills, providing state-of-the-art facilities, and connecting with real-world projects following market needs is the right direction.”
Overview of students nationwide winning prizes at the 2024 Loa Thanh awards
The 2024 Loa Thanh awards committee presented:
- 2 first prizes,
- 18 second prizes,
- 24 third prizes, and
- 22 consolation prizes.
Over the past 30 years, DTU has trained and provided society with nearly ten thousand masters, engineers, and architects.
Many of the scientists teaching at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the DTU School of Engineering & Technology have achieved high prestige, won big prizes, and obtained high rankings:
- Dr Hoang Nhat Duc: among the ten thousand most influential scientists in the world in 2023 and 2024 according to Elsevier; named “Rising Star of Science” in 2023 and 2024 by research.com; recipient of 2019 Golden Globe science & technology award.
- Assoc.Prof. Dr Bui Quoc Tinh: 410th internationally in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering in 2023 according to research.com.
DTU students of Architecture and Civil Engineering have set down outstanding accomplishments over the years:
- 2 first prizes, 2 third prizes, and 1 consolation prize at the IDEERS contest to design earthquake-resistant buildings in Taiwan,
- 20 Loa Thanh awards for outstanding graduation projects nationwide, including 1 national-level first prize in 2010,
- 17 Mechanics Olympiad medals in Structural Mechanics, Strength of Materials, Soil Mechanics, and Hydraulics,
- 20 Mathematics Olympiad medals,
- 10 Physics Olympiad medals,
- 30 awards at National Architecture Festivals,
- numerous prizes in competitions such as Sao Bien, the “Blooming Poland” painting contest, the 2024 “Hanoi - A Thousand Years of Civilization” watercolor contest, and the Spring Floral Display & Lighting Decoration contest.
DTU’s programs in Architecture and Civil Engineering are ranked in the range 151-200 worldwide according to the QS World Rankings by Subjects 2024.
(Media Center)