Smit Chheda is a Fellow of the Center for Buildings, Infrastructure and Public Space and enrolled in the Master’s Degree program for Construction Engineering & Management at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science of Columbia University. His undergraduate degree was a B.E. in Civil Engineering from the University of Mumbai in Mumbai, India, conferred in 2018. He went on to successfully complete courses like Project Planning & Control, Engineering Economic Analysis, Sustainable Concepts & Life Cycle Analysis, conducted by IIT Madras, IIT Roorkee and IIT Kharagpur respectively, securing elite category.
During his undergraduate degree, Smit got an opportunity to complete his final year project on Mumbai Metro and work on project management systems used in the project. He has also done research work in topics like Construction Safety and EVM & ESM Technique with his colleagues.
He has significant experience working as a trainee engineer at Sanghavi Realty where he worked on site for a 24 storey real estate project in Mumbai. His internship at the Ultratech Cement focused on providing technical assistance during concreting and preparing a report regarding the mindset of the customers in the Virar to Dahanu region of Mumbai, emphasising the difference when compared to the clients belonging to the other parts of Mumbai and providing the reason behind company’s inability to sell their recent technologically advanced products in that part of Mumbai.
His research interests have centered on affordable housing, public private partnerships and improving efficiency of construction using appropriate project delivery methods. At CBIPS he intends to participate in the research efforts pertaining to the factors affecting affordable housing and developing a possible way to implement the same using upcoming construction techniques like modular construction and an analysis of public private partnerships across the United States by identifying critical success and risk factors in construction projects.