2025 Competitions
2025 ASCE Society Competitions Hosted at Pacific Southwest
ASCE Concrete Canoe Competition
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.
AISC/ASCE 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.
The ASCE UESI Surveying Competition rules describe five tasks: a topographic mapping project with a presentation and four field tasks.
Timber-Strong Design Build Competition (pilot)
ASCE has partnered with the American Wood Council (AWC), APA – Engineered Wood Association (APA), and Simpson Strong-Tie (SST) to pilot the Timber-Strong Design Build℠ (TSDB℠) Competition. The competition seeks student teams to design and build an artistically creative 2-story wood light-framed building that is sustainable, aesthetically pleasing and structurally durable.
This competition will continue to be offered as a pilot competition in 2025.
Learn more about the competition partners:
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.
Regional Competitions
Environmental Design
The environmental competition tasks teams with designing and building a water filter to treat polluted water based on a mixture of specified contaminants. The objective is to create a treatment system that can remove all pollutants and restore water to reusable standards. In addition to their design, they will present a poster during the competition.
See HERE for RFIs (last updated 1/22/2025)
Transportation
Transportation teams are tasked with assessing three alternative transportation solutions and creating design plans, cost estimates, and alternative recommendations for each given condition. they must then submit a report and present a poster to share their findings and select the best alternative to present to the judges.
See HERE for some FAQs
Some more FAQs
PCI Prestressed Mini Beam Competition
The Prestressed Mini-Beam Competition focuses on constructing precast, prestressed concrete beams, a method characterized by primary reinforcement using seven wire-wrapped steel cables pre-tensioned before concrete casting, thereby achieving prestressing. In this competition, participants substitute traditional steel cables with tensioned bass guitar strings.
Each team is tasked with designing and fabricating beam cross-sections adhering to specific dimensions and volumes, followed by casting the concrete beams.
Each constructed beam undergoes testing the day after casting to determine its ultimate load capacity and are evaluated based on calculating the percentage difference between the ultimate load achieve during testing and the load predicted through design calculations.
Daniel W. MEAD Technical Paper
The MEAD Technical Paper is the only required competition at the symposium. ASCE PSWS uses the MEAD Paper Topic, which asks students to write a technical paper related to engineering ethics. An individual member carries out this presentation and must answer questions by a panel of judges regarding their paper’s topic. One winner from the ASCE Pacific Southwest Student Symposium will be named the Symposium Paper Competition Champion.
NEW THIS YEAR
The winning paper from the Student Symposium Paper Competition will advance for final consideration by the ASCE Committee on Student Members with all other entries received for the Society Daniel W. Mead Prize for Students Competition. The Society Daniel W. Mead Prize for Students winner will be announced in June.
If your chapter wants to compete in the Daniel W. Mead Prize for Students Competition, there is no need for a separate submission outside of the ASCE Pacific Southwest Student Symposium. The submission to the symposium will serve as the submission for the Daniel W. Mead Prize for Students Competition as well.
Geowall
Geowall teams will design a mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) retaining wall using Kraft paper taped to a poster board. The goal is to design an MSE wall using the least amount of reinforcement to support the retaining soil and loading.
*Sandbox Dimensions Revised 1/23/2025
RICHARD H. SCRANTON OUTSTANDING COMMUNITY SERVICE COMPETITION
New this year, the Committee on Student Members will hold a pilot competition at the ASCE Pacific Southwest Student Symposia to identify finalists for the ASCE Richard H. Scranton Award for Community Service.
The Richard H. Scranton Community Service Award is awarded to the chapter that demonstrates the strongest engagement in the community with projects that provide great value to and impact on their local community while engaging a large number of chapter members. This is an exciting opportunity for the ASCE Pacific Southwest Student Chapters to showcase their community service efforts!
Student teams will submit a digital copy of the poster in advance to the host school (deadline TBD) and bring the actual poster to the symposium highlighting their 2024 community service efforts. Criteria for submissions will be posted on the student symposium website. Students should expect to prepare for judges to observe, evaluate, and hold a conversation with them to ask specific questions about their projects and the impact of their efforts. Student posters, projects, and oral responses will be evaluated, considering all community service projects documented as a body of work.
Each student chapter may submit one poster. One winner from the ASCE Pacific Southwest Student Symposium will be named the Symposium Community Service Award Champion. The champion will advance for final consideration for the Scranton Award by the Committee on Student Members. Their finalist status will put them in competition with schools from other non-pilot student symposia submitting annual reports. The ASCE Richard H. Scranton Award for Community Service Winner will be announced in late May.