Competitions
2025 ASCE Society Competitions Hosted at Western Great Lakes
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.
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.
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 several tasks: a topographic mapping project with a presentation, topo map display at the symposium, and field tasks. 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 Construction Institute Competition (pilot)
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The Construction Institute Student Symposium Competition tasks participating students with several real-world construction engineering challenges to which teams will be asked to devise a solution and communicate it via presentation to a panel of judges. Sample projects may relate to any sector of civil engineering, while different parts of the problem statement may compel students to consider different parts of the project delivery process, such as: Site Logistics, QA/QC, Safety, Public Outreach, the Environment, Risk Management, and other project management and engineering considerations. Each student team shall act as a construction engineering firm, and these responses shall be directed and delivered professionally, similarly to how a real company would address an owner requesting additional information from a firm during the pre-construction phase of a job.