A team of students from Milwaukee School of Engineering captured first place at the National Design-Build Student Competition during the 2014 Design-Build Conference and Expo held in Dallas, Texas, the first week of October.
The competition, sponsored by the Design-Build Institute of America, challenged students from universities across the country to apply design-build best practices to project proposals focused on a more than 120,000 square foot recreation center on a college campus.
Student team finalists from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Washington vied against MSOE for the top spot. Each team finalist explained its proposal to a national jury composed of design and construction professionals who are all DBIA members.
MSOE’s team presented a solution to design and construct a $34 million 120,000-square-foot recreation facility on Beloit College’s campus.
The winning team, advised by associate professor Robert Lemke, was comprised of Donald Bogle-Boesiger, who is majoring in architectural engineering and construction management, as well as Jordan Borst, Benjamin Ihlen and Zane Witt, who are all majoring in architectural engineering and structural engineering.
“What set the Milwaukee School of Engineering team apart was their thorough dissection of the owner’s requirements to understand the owner’s vision in their written response to the RFP,” said jury chairman Dennis Ray Ashley. “During the presentation to the panel, they communicated with confidence and passion their ability to provide those design and construction services.”
To qualify for the national competition, MSOE was previously selected as one of 10 regional winners for the competition’s first stage, which judged candidates’ Request for Qualifications submissions. During the second level of the competition, each finalist team received a Request for Proposal.
The 2014 regional winners encompassed teams from California State University-Long Beach, Colorado State University, Iowa State University, MSOE, New School of Architecture & Design, Roger Williams University, University of Florida, University of Oklahoma and University of Washington.
