DMCI Homes, UP Engineering seal innovations collaboration agreement
Aiming to foster engineering excellence in the country, DMCI Homes has signed an agreement recently with the UP Engineering and Research Development Foundation Inc. (UPERDFI) supporting the institution’s College of Engineering (UPCoE) with research grants and awards through the Faculty Retention and Development Program.
Led by DMCI Homes president Alfredo Austria and UPERDFI executive director Alfonso Aliga Jr., the agreement aims to utilize more than P3 million fund intended exclusively to provide for four years a total of 12 professorial chair awards and 29 teaching research grants to deserving faculty and staff of UP CoE.
The agreement commenced this year and will run until academic year 2020.
“This is just one of the numerous partnerships we have forged with UP through the years in our constant pursuit of product quality and engineering excellence. We hope to do more collaborations in the future for the benefit not just of our company but of the construction industry as a whole,” the real estate firm’s chief disclosed.
The agreement was signed by Austria and Aliga at the DMCI Homes Corporate Center together with the real estate firm’s assistant vice-president for marketing Jan Venturanza and UP CoE’s dean Rizalinda de Leon.
With both DMCI Homes and UP gearing toward excellence in engineering, the agreement has also paved the way for both institutions to collaborate in order to create innovations that will benefit engineering, design and con- struction industries in the future.
Last October, teams from DMCI Homes Design and Engineering and UP CoE senior faculty members gathered for an initial discussion exploring various possible ways, methods, systems and program applications that would be beneficial to both institutions.
“Since the 1950s, UP Diliman in general and the College of Engineering in particular have been the recipient of the generosity of the DMCI Group, particularly in the construction of buildings and flood control facilities. Thanks to their leaders and UP Engineering alumni, the late DMCI founder David Consunji, DMCI Holdings chairman Isidro Consunji and DMCI Homes president Alfredo Austria. After the new ICE Building, DMCI Homes is now working with us to set up the Structural Design Engineering Laboratory, which will involve a suite of design software and work stations. This lab will prepare students for productive CE practice right after graduation,” Aliga said.
The recently signed agreement and collaboration are part of DMCI Homes’ Kaakbay sa Edukasyon, one of the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility programs.