Good forbiddingly awful class. Ran by El-Hacha, the man known for failing 60% of his class every year (including this one) out of principle. Even for Engg, this class has approximately 2 courses worth of content smashed into 1 and you are quizzed on literally all of for the final exam. 70% quizzes, 30% Final, and if you fail the final you fail the course outright, no exceptions, even if you were passing with the quizzes. All of it is brutally hard material, and he won't post any lectures on D2L if you happen to miss a class because at the point he deems you to be too lazy to pass. His textbook is also written by him, and its full of small grammatical and calculation errors that make it kind of impossible to learn off of if you're looking for an alternative from El-Hacha. (Credit where its ...read more

Course content is essentially an overall encompassing course around the true bread and butter behind how to design any and all types of buildings. Basically the exact stuff you originally hoped you'd be learning when you picked civil engineering back in first year. How to segment loads over areas, how to design concrete beams, rebar placement in concrete beams, steel beam design, safety factor, direction of load distribution, wood construction design, etc. Essentially everything you'd realistically need to know in order to take a set of architectural drawings and turn it into a real life code compliant blueprint for workers to start erecting. It would honestly be the most useful and interesting class you could take in ENGG if it weren't taught by El-Hacha.

Zero Pros and all Cons. Tough grading, terrible teaching skills (he simply expects you read and understood all 80 pages in his textbook each week before showing up to class about said topic, and proceeds to go through it at a lightning pace), will ask a question to the class and have someone answer it only to berate the person for their answer, and will go on about how kids in his class all get A's when after 3 years of being here I've yet to see him pass more than 50% of a class and all my current bosses were also failed by El-Hacha multiple times during their runs through uni. Hell, one boss literally had to get special permission from the dean to take the class at U of A simply because he knew after 2 attempts that El-Hacha would literally never pass him out of nothing more than sheer p...read more

There is no real good advice for this class, its just terrible in every aspect. Don't feel bad if you have to retake it next Winter, as some of our top students will still getting little more than a C+ while being 4.0 GPA students in every other aspect of Engg.