Competitions
2025 ASCE Society Competitions Hosted at Mid-America
Since the early 1970s, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student chapters have competed to be the best at designing, constructing, and racing concrete canoes. During that time, canoe mixtures and designs have varied, but the long-established tradition of teamwork, camaraderie, and spirited competition has been constant. Each year, teams, their associates, judges, and other participants build upon this tradition. This year, teams answered a call for Technical Proposals and Enhanced Focus Area Reports and are competing to be the winning bid on a prototype standardized canoe design for future concrete canoe competitions. Learn more about the competition.
Student Steel Bridge Competition
ASCE and the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) are partnering to offer the Student Steel Bridge Competition (SSBC) at ASCE Student Symposia.
The Student Steel Bridge Competition challenges students to extend their classroom knowledge to a practical and hands-on steel-design project that grows their interpersonal and professional skills, encourages innovation, and fosters impactful relationships between students and industry professionals.
Each student team develops a concept for a scale-model steel bridge to span approximately 20 feet and to carry 2,500 pounds according to the competition rules. The team must determine how to fabricate their bridge and then plan for an efficient assembly under timed construction conditions at the competition. Bridges are also load-tested, weighed, and judged on aesthetics.
ASCE UESI Surveying Competition
The ASCE UESI Surveying Competition’s educational and professional goals include a recognition of the importance of basic surveying principles to all civil engineering projects. Students will be required to use standard field and office equipment and procedures to solve common problems encountered in industry. A clear understanding of and ability to apply basic surveying principles will assist the graduate civil engineer in communicating and working with the surveying professionals on the job site and during the design process. Learn more about the competition.
ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition
The ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition challenges students to develop a stronger understanding of sustainability and learn to incorporate sustainable solutions into everyday problems that engineers incur. Students are encouraged to be creative in their solutions and use all resources available. Learn more about the competition.
2025 Topic
After the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of ASCE (the City) and many private companies implemented flexible workplace policies, allowing employees to work in hybrid and remote settings. This shift has resulted in office building occupancy averaging less than 25% of pre-pandemic levels, affecting the ability and willingness of commercial offices to sustain their previous levels of investment and returns. In response, The City has formed a public-private partnership (PPP) to acquire a parcel with a 5-story commercial office building for mixed-use redevelopment. The City has adopted the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure’s Envision framework to achieve its sustainability goals and will use it as a key assessment tool for this project.
3D Printing Competition
The ASCE 3D Printing Competition promotes the application of 3D printing technology in the field of civil engineering. In 2025, the ASCE 3D Printing: Bridging the Future Competition focuses on bridges. Students are challenged to design an aesthetically pleasing, strong, and stiff 3D-printed bridge that will take the least amount of assembly time and meets the geometric requirements.
The 3D Printing Competition has its origin at the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s inter-collegiate competition in November 2021.
This competition will continue to be offered as a pilot competition in 2025.
Student Symposium Paper Competition (Eligibility Requirement)
The ASCE Student Symposium Paper Competition emphasizes the importance of being able to write and present a paper as essential communication skills for all engineers and often necessary for advancement in your career.
Good faith participation in the ASCE Student Symposium Paper Competition, including submission and presentation by at least one (1) member of the ASCE Student Chapter, is a requirement to advance to an ASCE Society-wide Competition Finals. Competitions requiring this include Concrete Canoe, Student Steel Bridge, UESI Surveying, and Sustainable Solutions.
No other Society-wide competition report or paper may serve as a submission for the ASCE Student Symposium Paper Competition.
Submission Deadline: March 1, 2025
Submission email: [email protected]
The Student Symposium Paper Competition topic is the Daniel W. Mead Topic: Considering ethics, what role do civil engineers play in the prevention and response to an infrastructure disaster? Should an infrastructure disaster rouse civil engineers globally to advocate for more resilient protections for built infrastructure from climate-driven and/or man-made disasters?
Consider the Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse in Maryland, the Interstate 95 Collapse in Pennsylvania, or other infrastructure disasters. Civil engineers are responsible for planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting and advancing the health, safety, and welfare of the public. Following large infrastructure disasters, civil engineers are often placed in the public spotlight to respond and assess the cause of the disaster and how to prevent future similar events.
The Student Symposium Paper Competition and the Daniel W. Mead Prize for Students are two separate competitions and must be submitted separately. The Daniel W. Mead Prize for Students is due March 1st and submitted to [email protected]. The Student Symposium Paper Competition will be submitted to the host directly by TBD and submitted to TBD.
1st & 2nd Year Design Competition
Teams will be given a design prompt and a variety of materials to use. The intention of this competition is to build engineering efficacy in first and second year students through a controlled design and testing environment. As the competition is open ended and a mystery beforehand, no prior knowledge of CAD or engineering principles will be required. Teams will be given one hour to prepare and craft their design. The teams will be evaluated on the basis of the results of product testing, material use, and questions from judges.
Concrete Bowling
Teams will create and design a bowling ball within the requirements linked below. Each will be scored based on the performance of each of the tests done.
Concrete Cornhole
The objective of the concrete cornhole competition is to use knowledge of concrete mix proportions students have learned in their classes. The constructed board will be used in a friendly cornhole competition. Each school will provide a design and constructed cornhole board made of concrete. The boards will be used in single elimination cornhole tournament; matchups will be determined at random. Judging will be based on tournament placement, aesthetics, and technical components including the mix design of the concrete.
FE Quizbowl
The 2025 FE Quiz Bowl will consist of two competition rounds. In the first round, teams will have one hour to answer 20 FE-style questions on paper. Questions will be presented to competitors one at a time for a specified duration based on difficulty level. The three highest-scoring teams from the first round will advance to the second round, which will occur in a Jeopardy-style competition format. Spectators are encouraged to attend this stage of the competition. All questions will be formatted and modeled after the NCEES Civil FE Exam.
Transportation Competition
Teams will be presented with an intersection improvement/project development problem. The goal of this transportation competition is to make it achievable for all students regardless of experience, knowledge, or any software. For those reasons, this competition will be a mystery design challenge that requires no prior knowledge and no need for software. Details about the problem will be provided at the time of the competition. The submitted materials and presentation will be evaluated on effectiveness, completeness, and execution of presentation. Teams will be given one hour to prepare a proposed solution, organize submittal materials, and prepare a 5- minute presentation. Team presentations will be delivered to a panel of judges followed by questions from the judges.