Friday, January 13, 2017

Government invests $32.6M in Engineering 7

The federal government has announced it will contribute $32.6 million for the construction of a state-of-the-art engineering building at the University of Waterloo. Minister of Small Business and Tourism Bardish Chagger, MP for Waterloo, announced the funding under a program to update research and innovation infrastructure.

Engineering 7, the seven-storey, 240,000-square-foot building, will accommodate expanding demand from student enrolment and feature advanced research labs. It is under construction on Waterloo’s east campus at a total cost of $88 million, with a scheduled opening in the spring of 2018.

Home to growing biomedical and mechatronics engineering programs, as well as research on disruptive technologies including machine intelligence, mobile robotics, autonomous vehicles and wearable biomedical devices, Engineering 7 will be one of the largest buildings on campus when complete. An atrium and enclosed pedestrian bridges will link it to the existing Engineering 5 building.

The funding is from the Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund, a $2-billion initiative launched in 2016 to enhance and modernize research facilities on Canadian campuses, positioning them at the forefront of innovation required for a clean, sustainable economy.

“Since its founding 60 years ago, the University of Waterloo has been doing things differently,” said Feridun Hamdullahpur. “The Engineering 7 building is a prime example of Waterloo’s unconventional, creative, innovative thinking. It will be home to world-leading talent and research, continuing to expand the impact of disruptive technologies that will help to put Canada at the forefront of the global economy.”

A focal point of Engineering 7 will be the Engineering Ideas Clinic, a novel space allowing professors from different engineering disciplines to collectively teach theoretical concepts through experiential, hands-on learning. Waterloo Engineering’s 7,500 undergraduate students will use the facility.

In addition to study and social areas, lecture halls and 20 garages for student design teams, the new building will also house a cutting-edge additive manufacturing — or 3D printing — lab and the RoboHub, a unique testing facility for aerial, mobile and magnetically levitated robots.

“Engineering 7 is more than a building. It epitomizes the future of engineering education and the preparation of students to experience early, innovate early and incubate their ideas early, right from first year,” said Pearl Sullivan, dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Waterloo. “It will also be a meeting place for our 1,000 Canadian industry partners, as well as entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, scholars and academics from around the world.”

Financial support for Engineering 7 is also coming from an ongoing, private-sector fundraising campaign through donations from alumni and industry partners.

An update on the Unit4 implementation project

Happy New Year from the Unit4 Implementation Team!

We’re down to just under 4 months left until launch and would like to provide an update on where we are with the project. We’ve just finished up our Build phase, and received the initial testable build of the system in late November. The priority before the holiday break was populating that build with the additional configuration and testable data needed so we could start the test phase.

This brings us into the phase we’re moving into now: Integrated System Testing. The intent of this phase is to validate the solution built is what we asked for. We need to do some end-to-end testing on the system to ensure that all of the required components we need to do our jobs are there and working as expected. Follow-up to that will be User Acceptance Testing, with a target of end of January to begin that work, and that’s where we’ll be doing end user and business process testing. We’re still on target for our May 1 go-live.

Parallel to all of this are the Interface and Reporting segments of the project. We’re working with partners in each of the interface areas and we are providing them with data specifications so that they can work with their own software vendors on the necessary updates. The priority here is the automated interfaces to ensure we can support those for May 1.  Reporting is closely related with the interface work as much of the information that is passed back and forth between systems is achieved via some form of reporting.

Our new accounting structure has been finalized and there were several sessions early in December where this information was presented. If you weren’t able to attend, there is a recording of that presentation on the Finance Training SharePoint site as well as a chart showing all the attributes (the new system’s name for what we would call “segments” today) and their lengths. Many of these will be familiar, but the new concept introduced is the unique identifier. The unique identifier, which the system calls a work order, represents the lowest level of meaningful cost breakdown. Ultimately, since the unique identifier represents that lowest level of breakdown, when coding a transaction, you need only 3 pieces of information rather than the 8 pieces of information that is needed today. This new structure is expected to alleviate many of the code combination and validation errors that we see in the current system.  Identification of the necessary unique identifiers we’ll need in the new system for May 1 has begun. We’ve started meeting with the larger units to begin that mapping process.

The December information sessions also included a high-level introduction to some of the business process changes that we expect to implement with the new system including online purchase requisitions and online customer invoice requests. More details on these changes will be included in topic-specific sessions scheduled in February. See myHRinfo to register: FIN998 for the Revenue sessions and FIN997 for the Accounts Payable/Procurement sessions. We recommend that anyone involved in these processes sign up to attend one of the offerings.

Factoids on Friday the 13th 

The Waterloo Warriors are among more than 20,000 student-athletes across the country who will be helping to lead the campus conversation on mental health as part of Bell Let's Talk Day, scheduled for January 25. Check out the Athletics and Recreation website for more information about the annual initiative.

Deborah MacLatchy, a distinguished scientist with extensive experience in research, teaching and senior administration, has been appointed the next president and vice-chancellor of Wilfrid Laurier University. A former dean of science who has served as Laurier’s provost and vice-president: academic since 2009, MacLatchy will begin her five-year term as president and vice-chancellor on July 1. She succeeds Max Blouw, who has served two terms as WLU's president.

Two funerals for Waterloo retirees will take place tomorrow. The memorial for Distinguished Professor Emeritus Mike Sharratt will take place at Knox Waterloo Presbyterian Church, with a visitation from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m. followed by a Celebration of Life at 3:00 p.m. A reception will follow. The memorial for Pat Bow begins with a visitation from 10:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m., and a service at 11:00 a.m. at the Church of the Holy Saviour in Waterloo.