April 25, 2022
Houston Texas, April 15th-24th 2022
Special Thank You to Bee Kotjuis for her help, to the organising committee Kostas, Tatiana and Kai and to our sponsors Drees& Sommer, Fluor and Dura Vermeer!
Last April, a group of 30 students along with 2 Professors travelled to Houston, Texas for our International Business Tour. Houston is considered as the ‘Energy Capital of the world’. Although, the economy is primarily based on the energy industry, biomedical research, health care and aerospace also consitute large sectors. More and more Dutch companies enter the US market in Houston.
It was a 10-day trip which started with a 3-day stay in Galveston, Texas. Students spent time on the beach, visited the Pleasure Pier and had the chance to taste the Texan BBQ.
On Monday, the students first visited the Texas A&M university where they attended an interesting presentation about the coastal flood risk reduction reasearch for the Galveston region. Next visit of the day was the Rice University where they attended another interesting presentation about the Galveston Bay park plan.
On Tuesday, the students visited the fabrication site of Opero Energy which is a technology provider specializing in the engineering and fabrication of modular process systems for the energy and renewable industry. Later on, they visited the headquarter offices of Audubon Companies of which Opero Energy is an affiliation. The same night, the group watched a baseball game of the local stars, Houston Astros.
On Wednesday, the students visited Fluor Houston offices where they played a custom-made board game and attended few presentation by the management team. The same evening was free of activities so many chose to go to the Mall for shopping or hang out in the surrounding neighbourhood.
On Thursday, the students visited Walter P Moore headquarter office which is an international civil engineering company. They had a great workshop about the Bagby Street Project. The same evening, the students were invited on a company event of Walter P Moore where they had the chance to taste the local tradition crawfish boil.
On Friday, the students visited the Hines headquarter office as well as their newly-finished Brava Tower in downtown Houston and their under construction project called Levit Green. Hines is a global real estate investment and developer company. The evening was free of activities.
Finally on Saturday, the students stepped in the bus to the Nasa Space Center. Later in the evening, the group enjoyed their last dinner together and the next day bid farewell to this amazing experience!
