After having lunch at Vincom’s Mega Mall and touring Vinhome’s Smart City, we took a short bus ride to the Vietnam Institute for Building Science and Technology (IBST). Established in 1963, IBST is one of 41 institutions in Vietnam under government management and is overseen by the Ministry of Construction. They currently have around 600 employees with about 60% working at the Hanoi office. IBST is at the forefront of various projects, consisting of the structural design of buildings, building information modeling, third party reviews, building condition surveying, building monitoring, project/construction management, and permitting.
The visit to IBST started with a presentation on the company where we were treated with hot tea and clementines. We were shown example projects many of which involved complex BIM analysis. IBST has been involved in a variety of projects including new construction and restorative construction. There were many notable clients including Toyota and Samsung, as well as VinGroup, who we had visited projects of previously. We then had a discussion on the construction industry in Vietnam in comparison to the United States.
We next went on a tour of the facilities which included multiple laboratories dedicated to testing different components of building durability and material properties. The material property laboratories included a wide variety of machinery. The first laboratory we toured had machines for concrete compression and hardness testing. While the concrete testing laboratory was not being used during our visit, the laboratory for testing the tensile strength of materials was in use and we saw a live demonstration of a tensile strength test. The material being analyzed was wrapped with metal wire and stretched until the machine reached its maximum load and the deformation of the material was recorded.
Moving on, we toured the laboratories for building durability and resiliency where firefighting testing, seismic testing, and wind testing took place. Mockups of buildings were constructed and then tested against high wind and water pressure to determine if they could withstand natural weather phenomena.
We then Enjoyed some delicious coffee, cacao, and smoothies at the newly built canteen for employees which was donated by a client of IBST. The pre-constructed sections of the canteen were shipped in from Japan and assembled on-site.
After dinner, we went shopping at the Hanoi Night Market. Hundreds of vendors and shops lined a street in the Hanoi Old Quarter that gets closed to traffic from 6-11 pm three nights a week for the market. The shops offered a wide variety of products including souvenirs, clothes, food, jewelry, and more. Even with there being no traffic, the street was packed with both tourists and locals shopping and was bustling with activity. We also practiced our negotiation skills to barter for lower prices. We walked the entire length of the night market (about 3 km) and ended up at a small lake named Hồ Hoàn Kiếm. Ultimately, it was a successful shopping trip and we purchased many souvenirs to bring back.
Blog written by Hannah Daggett