Construction Management Club Finds Success at Competition
The construction management program at Roger Williams participates in several big events that contribute to its’ growing success at the university. This includes the Associated Schools of Construction Annual Competition, where the university sends teams of students to compete in several different categories of competitions.
This year, every construction management team sent to the ASC competition earlier this month placed in the top three, being the only university to do so in every category.
The ASC is an association of schools with four-year construction management programs. Every year, they host a competition that showcases designs and ideas form schools across the northeast, along with a career fair. This year, the group from RWU placed third in pre-construction, third in design-build, and second in heavy-civil. Last year, RWU only placed in one category.
“Having all three teams place this year was a proud moment for myself and for the program,” said senior Nicholas Morrison, who was on the heavy-civil team. “I was a rookie on the heavy-civil team last year, and we were the only RWU team to place, placing 3rd. While I was proud of our team, it was hard to see my fellow students put in so much work and not place.”
According to club President Jon Gomes, a lot of the schools competing have student bodies of around 15,000 to choose their competitors from.
“To be the only school to place in three categories is a strong indicator of just how hard working and talented our students are,” said Gomes.
Some of the schools RWU went up against were Clarkson University, Rochester Institute of Technology and Drexel University.
Preparing for the competition was no easy feat.
“In order to prepare, teams often gather several times prior to the competition on weekends to conduct ‘dry runs,’where we are given a construction project by our advisors, and essentially work as if we were at the competition, spending up to 12 hours on a weekend estimating, scheduling, coordinating and creating a presentation,” said Morrison.
All this work, however, did pay off in the end, and he said that he hopes that RWU will place first next year.
The construction management program on the RWU campus is growing with the construction of the new SECCM lab that will house the program and its labs, and will no doubt continue to reach new levels once the structure is finally in use.
“Look no further than what’s happening at the center of campus right now,” said Morrison. “The new SECCM building serves as a symbol of the great strides the RWU Construction Management program is making.”
