Nov 23, 2021 3 min read

Penn Commercial Business/Technical School students are nearly finished with a real-world application and community service project benefiting the St. Oscar Romero Parish in Washington County.

Three students – Nathan Knizer and Rachel Nedic, both second-quarter students and John Gansberger, a fourth-quarter student – worked together to survey and draw floor plans for Our Lady of Miraculous Medal Church in Meadow Lands and St. Patrick’s Church in Canonsburg. Their project concludes with floor plan drawings of Holy Rosary Church in Muse, which the class began Monday.

This is the first time Penn Commercial’s computer-aided design (CAD) program partnered with the community.

“We don’t have floor plans developed, evacuation plans for any of the churches,” said Scott Moore, chairperson of the St. Oscar Romero Safety Ministry. “They call a church a soft target. You never know when someone may come in and do you harm. Part of the risk assessment was having floor plans drawn up.”

Moore said the parish was long overdue for updated floor plans. When he reached out to Penn Commercial, lead CADD instructor Kirk McCartney jumped at the opportunity for his students to gain real-world experience.

“It gives them experience in seeing different types of floor plans, different types of structural construction, architectural designs and different styles,” McCartney said. “It went very well.”

Students were assigned sections of church buildings, and they put their floor plans together to create a detailed picture of each church campus.

“I’d be working off (Rachel)’s drawings and she’d be working off of mine,” Gansberger said. “We collaborated in that way.”

Knizer said he felt pressure to be accurate, since his floor plans are being used for community safety plans. The hardest part of the project was, he said, taking measurements in the fields as opposed to on a computer model.

“(There were) a lot of missed measurements that we shouldn’t have missed,” Knizer said. “We ended up making it work still.”

Learning curve aside, McCartney was proud of his students for completing the project quickly – it took two weeks to survey and draw floor plans of the first church and only one week to complete the second set of drawings.

“It was very impressive … the work they did and the time frame they got it done,” McCartney said.

Moore, too, was impressed with the Penn Commercial students’ work.

“These are professional drawings. These aren’t just sketch; these are professional grade drawings that they did for us,” Moore said. “We took these floor plans and gave them to our first responders so that our first responders can put this into their emergency plans in case they have to respond to our different churches.”

Canonsburg Mayor Dave Rhome presented the students, McCartney and CADD instructor Elmer Jackson a certificate of recognition for their work Monday morning in front of St. Patrick’s.

“This is just a wonderful opportunity. When these (floor plans) are posted inside the buildings in different strategic locations, if you’re visiting and you’re not that familiar with the campus and emergency does arise, you’ll be able to get out quickly and safely,” said Rhome. “The safer that we can make it, the safer it is for everybody. Ultimately, it reduces the work that the first responder has to do.”

Moore added that now, “we can have a safer place to worship,” and Nedic said that knowledge is the most rewarding part of this project.

“Knowing that they now have something that they can provide to the fire department, keeping people safe, it’s a good feeling,” she said.