Building technology personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

My interest in building technology started with a plug-in thermometer I bought to settle a disagreement about the heating. Our rented terrace has a back bedroom that is always cold, and I wanted to know why. Over one winter I logged temperature and humidity in three rooms, then compared the readings with the weather forecast and with when the boiler was on. The back room lagged behind the others and stayed damp for hours after anyone showered. Reading about it afterwards, I learned the language for what I had measured: thermal bridging at the solid wall, poor air movement, surfaces cold enough for condensation to form. That gave me a way of thinking about buildings that I find genuinely absorbing. A house is not just a shape; it is an assembly of materials with different conductivities, moisture behaviours and lifespans, and small decisions about junctions and ventilation decide whether people are comfortable or ill. I want to study building technology rather than architecture because I am drawn to how construction actually performs once it is built and occupied, including the gap between designed and measured energy use. I am also interested in retrofit. Most of the housing in my city already exists, and much of it is like ours: solid walled, leaky and expensive to heat. Working out how to improve that stock without causing damp problems seems to me a more difficult and more useful problem than starting from scratch, and it is the kind of work I would like to be qualified to do.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

Physics has been the most direct preparation. Thermal physics gave me conduction, convection and radiation properly rather than as loose words, and electricity taught me to be careful about measurement and sources of error, which mattered when my sensor readings turned out to depend on where in the room I put it. Maths supports this: I am comfortable rearranging equations, working with logs and gradients, and handling the coordinate geometry and trigonometry that come up in setting out and in roof and wall sections. In Design and Technology I have been taught to justify material choices rather than just pick something that looks right. My coursework is a wall-mounted drying rack for small flats, and choosing between plywood, MDF and softwood made me think about moisture movement, fixings and how a product behaves over years rather than in a photograph. I have also enjoyed the parts of the course on manufacturing tolerance and on testing prototypes to destruction. Alongside lessons I have read around the subject. The Building Regulations Approved Documents are freely available online and I have worked through parts of the ventilation and conservation of fuel and power sections, which was slow going but showed me how requirements are actually written and where they leave judgement to the designer. I keep notes on terms I do not understand and look them up rather than skimming past them.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

I work Saturdays and some holidays at a builders' merchants, mostly on the trade counter and in the yard. Customers arrive knowing exactly what they need and very little time in which to explain it, so I have learned insulation boards, membranes, aggregates and fixings quickly, and how to check an order before it leaves. Listening to builders argue about whether a breather membrane goes above or below the battens taught me more about sequencing than any diagram. It has also taught me to ask a clear question when I do not know something, which I would rather do than guess. At college I am part of a small eco-group. Four of us surveyed classroom temperatures over a fortnight and found that the rooms on the south side of one block were noticeably warmer in the afternoons, with blinds usually left up. We wrote a short summary for our site manager suggesting the blinds be closed on sunny mornings before lessons. It is a modest result and I would not claim it changed much, but we collected our own data, agreed how to present it, and put it to someone who could act on it. Sharing the logging rota was the part I found most useful to learn. Outside college I play in a local netball league, which keeps my weekends structured, and I do most of the food shopping for my household, budgeting for four people. Between work, study and home I have had to get organised about time, and I expect a construction-related degree to demand the same.

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