Competition Teams

^{School of Design + Construction} _{Construction Management}

Overview

Students from the Construction Management program have the opportunity to participate in the Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) Region 6|7 Student Competition (Commercial, Virtual Design & Construction, Design Build, and Heavy Civil), the Northwest Construction Consumer Council Student Bid Competition, the National Design Build Institute of America (DBIA) Student Competition, and the Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA) Student Competition. All of these competitions are centered on real-world issues similar to what they would experience as industry professionals. This enables students to work together in disciplinary and interdisciplinary teams and showcase what they have learned on a regional and/or national stage. Over the years, these interdisciplinary teams have consisted of students from Construction Management, Architecture, Civil Engineering, Interior Design, Construction Engineering, and Landscape Architecture.

The WSU Construction Management program has a proven history of success at these student competitions, including:

29 placings over 27 years at the ASC student competition,
2 wins over 15 years at the NWCCC student competition, and
3 placings over 11 years at the DBIA student competition.

commercial 1st place. — Scholarly associate professor, program head and coach, Jason Peschel with the 1st place student commercial team including Cameron Stout, William McGaughey (alternate), Shaaki Shaik, Nikhil Gurusiddaiah, Georgia Robinson, Meghan Smith, and Grace Lium at the 2022 ASC Student Competition. Students used scheduling, estimating, site logistics, site safety, and technical writing skills to develop a proposal for a real-life construction problem presented to the project’s management team.

Competitions

ASC Student Competition

Annually, students from the Construction Management program compete at the Associated Schools of Construction’s Region 6 & 7 competition held in Sparks, Nevada. This is one of the largest construction management student competitions in the nation. Annually, there are over 1,100 students competing on approximately 173 different teams from 43 universities in 17 different categories over a two-day period. Each year teams represent WSU in the Commercial, Design-Build, Virtual Design and Construction (VDC), and Heavy-Civil divisions.

Depending upon student interest, WSU Construction Management students have also participated in the Mechanical and Preconstruction Services division. The competition provides an opportunity for further collaboration as the teams often include double-majors (Construction Management + Architecture) or students from architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, construction engineering, and civil engineering. The students and coaches put a considerable amount of effort into the team’s success. This effort is clearly exhibited in the fact that at least one team from WSU Construction Management has placed in the competition for all but one of the last 13 years.

heavy civil 1st place. — Assistant professors, coaches, Tommy Tafazzoli and Kishor Shrestha with the 1st place student heavy civil team including Samuel Dawkins, Zachary Martian (alternate), Emiko Cook (alternate), Travis Vaughn, Benjamin Ahmann, Jaeden Biehn, Alfredo Prieto, and Brayden Bostwick at the 2022 ASC Student Competition. Students used scheduling, estimating, site logistics, site safety, and technical writing skills to develop a proposal for a real-life construction problem

DBIA Student Competition

This national competition sponsored by the Design-Build Institute of America is in its third year of existence. The competition is intended to allow students to apply design-build best practices to successfully propose on a project.

The competition includes the two-step process of a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) and a Request for Proposals (RFP). The Request for Qualifications (RFQ) stage is open to everyone, but serves to shortlist the entrants from each region. During the Request for Proposals (RFP) phase the ten regional winners develop their delivery solution to design and construct a particular project. The top teams are invited to present their proposal before an expert panel at the Design-Build Conference and Expo. Teams from WSU competed in the first two years, taking 1^st place in 2012 and 2018.

MCA Student Competition

The Mechanical Contractors Association of America has sponsored a student competition within their annual convention every year for the last thirteen years. The project focuses on the different plumbing and HVAC aspects of the mechanical sector of commercial and industrial construction. The 2014 project was based on a real-world project that involved the partial retrofit of a food processing plant outside of Chicago, Illinois. WSU students who are involved with the MCA student group have the opportunity to compete in this national competition.

NWCCC Student Competition

The Northwest Construction Consumers Council host a student completion for the Commercial teams in preparation of the ASC Student Competition on an annual basis. The schools invited to participate in this friendly, regional competition include the Construction Management programs from Washington State University, University of Washington, Central Washington and Oregon State University.