Over 140 students participated in the Forum’s seventh annual Engineers Week Student Competition held on February 20, 2013.The problem, supplied by Fluor Corporation, was stated as . . . .

“Your Firm has been awarded an EPCM Prime Contract to serve every ski station in the North of Spain. In this project, Your Firm’s scope of work is to ensure that the snow on the ski slopes is kept at optimal conditions for which it is required to supply a kind of special artificial snow, provided and specified by the client.Under this contract Your Firm will only be responsible for transportation and storage of snow to the ski slope base. The spreading or distribution of the snow will form part of another contract by others.”

Prizes were awarded to teams that had the greatest score which was the sum of the following: materials points, saved construction time, number of maintenance actions, snow quantity and job well done bonus. Prizes awarded were for First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth places.

 Student team Titanium amassed 135,764 points to win the 2013 Rice University Student Engineering Competition, garnering cash prizes of $150 each for teammates (left-to-right) Momona Yamagami, Edgar Silva, and Austin Woo, all freshmen in Jones College.  The event sponsored in part by the Fluor Corp. gave the same challenge to its engineers on the same day at its facilities around the world. The competition’s main sponsor is the Rice Global Engineering & Construction Forum and Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering. Rice is the only academic institution that took part in the challenge.

The students, who didn’t have to be engineering majors to enter, did not know what the task would be before arriving for the competition, but quickly became immersed in a flurry of problem solving to get their clips into the cylinders using strictly mechanical means with the tools and materials provided.

With limited time to plan, construct and demonstrate their solutions, all under the watchful eyes of judges, the teams raced the clock and each other. Students scored extra points for minutes and construction materials saved.

The lively competition was followed by pizza and soft drinks which were thoroughly enjoyed by competitors and judges alike. Judges from companies sponsoring the Forum participated in the event. Forum Chairman Tom Anderson, CB&I, had the role of announcer and commentator for the competition.

Prizes also were awarded to the second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-place student teams.  Members of student team Dennis Frogman won $125 each by placing second with 120,333 points; team Rebuttal claimed third place money of $100 each with 96,220 points; Team Rocket placed fourth with 90,220 points to win $75 each; and team Caged Power was fifth with 82,668 points to win $50 each.

2nd Place Team: Dennis Frogman

team members l-r
Rucker Simon, Thomas Scuseria and Andrew Duberg

3rd Place Team: Rebuttal

team members l-r
Ben Fisher, Stephen Yan, Maurice Harari and Gabriel Breternitz

4th Place Team: Team Rocket

team members l-r
Benjamin Weia, Sunny Kim, Jonathan Ou and Kevin Cheng

5th Place Team: Caged Power

team members l-r
Kelly Powers, Archit Chaba and Zach Scott