CEE Students Take Second at the Associated Schools of Construction Heavy/Civil Bid Competition

A team of six Michigan Tech students earned second place in the Associated Schools of Construction Great Lakes Region III Heavy/Civil Bid Competition on Saturday, Oct. 21, in suburban Chicago. The competition requires student teams to develop a proposal for a construction project in 16 hours. Students are required to stay in their hotel rooms without any contact with the outside world.

The team consisted of civil engineering students Matt Skop, Matt Miller, Lauren Bendes, Brian Geiger and Jacob Barden and environmental engineering student Jessica Robinson. All of these students are part of the Pavement, Design, Construction and Materials Enterprise.

This year's challenge was a wetlands mitigation project in California, involving the construction of a lagoon. Among other tasks, the students were required to read and understand the contract, perform quantity takeoff, develop a plan to execute the project, determine crew productivity/cost, identify the risks associated with the project, properly submit a bid and explain the process to senior management.

The competition is intended to simulate the situation that contractors face in submitting bids on Heavy/Civil projects. The team finished second behind a team from the University of Cincinnati. This is the fourth time in five years that the Michigan Tech team has come in second. Cincinnati is the defending National Champion in Heavy/Civil and has won the Region III championship for the last nine years.

The team is now preparing for the Internal Bidding Competition in the Pavement, Design, Construction and Materials Enterprise that will occur early in the spring semester. The competition uses a local MDOT project with a format similar to the Associated Schools of Construction competition. In doing this, the six students will be sharing what they learned in Chicago with the other Pavement, Design, Construction and Materials Enterprise members. The team that will participate in the region competition next year will be selected from the students that participate in the Internal Bidding Competition this spring.

Participation in this competition was made possible through the Pavement, Design, Construction and Materials Enterprise, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Kiewit Eastern Construction Company. The team was advised/coached by Associate Professor Kris G. Mattila.

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