Recap: 2025 ASC Student Competition
38th ASC Region 6 & 7 Student Competition 2025
By Michael Krug, CSI Emeritus, CDT
What is ‘Associated Schools of Construction’?
ASC is an international association that represents the interests of academic and industry professionals involved in institutional construction education. In the early 1960s none of the professional and educational societies concerned with the built environment provided a place, a welcome or any benefit for curriculum with the teaching of construction as the major objective. At that time curricula for teaching construction had been in existence for more than twenty years. Those teaching architecture, civil engineering and other allied disciplines believed that construction curricula should be relegated to a status of non-professional occupation.
In 1965 the University of Florida extended an invitation to all institutions with a construction program. On March 19 &20 of that year fourteen representatives of nine institutions met at the University of Florida to consider the formation of an organization that would meet the needs of collegiate schools and departments with a curriculum in construction. At the meeting key agreements were made as to the purpose and the needs of such an organization. Subsequently the group formed the association to be called the “Associated Schools of Construction” and established requirements for membership. The association voted to hold the first general meeting in September of 1965 at the University of Michigan”.
Regions were established for North America which comprises regions 1-7. The regions in order, Northeast, Southeast, Great Lakes, North Central, South Central, Rocky Mountain and Far West. International Regions were not discussed until the 42nd conference in 2007 and Region 8, Europe was formed 6 years later at the 48th conference. Since then, Region 9, Oceania/Asia/Africa, comprised of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Jordan and India, has been formed.
The timing of the formation of this organization could not have been better. In the 1970s the introduction of new materials and methods increased at a pace never seen before. Then in the 1980s technology changed at an incredible pace. In short order specifications and plans that had been developed on a typewriter and a drafting table all started to be done on computers allowing electronic versions to be shared and edited instantly. In many ways this improved construction, but also had a negative impact as I was once told in a Construction Specifications Institute presentation, “the best thing that ever happened to specifications was word processing and it was also the worst thing that ever happened”. A specification that was once 70 pages long ballooned to 700 pages. Being able to cut and paste, if not done carefully, made for more confusing specifications.
The 2025 ‘Associated Schools of Construction’ Region Six & 7 Competition.
Thirty-eight years ago, the first Region 6 & 7 competition was held. From February 5-8, 2025 CSI Northwest, Southwest and West Regions attended the 2025 Student Competition and Construction Management Conference as a sponsor of the event. We have been a sponsor of this event since 2014. I had the pleasure of attending the event along with representatives of CSI Chapters from Spokane, Denver, San Diego, Fresno and Sacramento. This is an intense two-day competition that brought the best students from 56 schools across the country and one school from Dublin, Ireland to compete in various construction problems presented by 18 sponsoring companies. The competition is held at the Nugget Convention Center in Sparks Nevada. There were 23 schools each from Region 6 & 7 (Mountain Region and Far West Region), 11 schools from Regions 1-5. A total of 21 states and 1 school from Region 8 (England & Europe). This year over 1800 students attended with a total of 241 teams competing in 16 competitions. A complete list of the competitions and the winners of each competition can be found at www.asc67.org. Topics of the competitions range from heavy civil to mixed use, mechanical and electrical.
The problems are real world construction projects that the sponsors have either built or have bid and are in the process of building. One of the sponsors commented that sometimes the student teams will come up with a novel approach that the contractor had not thought of.
Arrival and Competition:
Students arrive on Wednesday and have an opportunity to visit some of the sponsoring associations and construction software providers. That evening is a welcome dinner after which, hopefully the students and their faculty get a good night’s rest as the competition kicks off at 5:00 AM Thursday morning with the teams seeing the problem they are to work on for the first time. The teams will create a solution to the problem complete with a binder covering all aspects of the project, a written bid price and a visual presentation. Turn in times range from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM that evening. The students will review what they have turned in and if they find anything they need to change they will change it prior to their live presentation and explain why the change from what they had turned in the night before. Additionally, they need to practice their live presentations. The maximum number of team members is 6 and they may not have anyone else assisting as a runner or to get copies made of documents or graphics for their presentation. Teams bring alternates to the competition in the event that one of the team members is unable to compete.
Presentations:
Friday morning the presentations start. A complete schedule of presentations is made available by 6:30 AM. Students do not know what time slot their presentation will be in until the schedule is released. Presentations are made in front of a panel of judges from the problem sponsor company. The teams are usually presenting as if they were a project team presenting to the company’s upper management and ownership. It was clear that some of the teams had practiced team presentations long before arriving in Sparks. I saw presentations that were coordinated as it flowed from one team member to the next covering all aspects of the project flawlessly. The pressure is on these student teams, but an incredible work load is placed on the problem sponsor judges. They have to evaluate the binders that were turned in on Thursday prior to the live presentations. The fewest number of teams in a competition was 8 in Sustainable Building, sponsored by Skanska. The most was 21 teams in Commercial, sponsored by Hensel Phelps. The live presentations started at 7:00 AM with the last presentation at 6:00 PM. It had to be a late night for the judges from Hensel Phelps to do a final evaluation of all of the presentations and determine first, second and third place winners.
Friday evening is a time for the students to relax and visit sponsoring companies at any of the 34, company hosted student hospitality suites. The sponsoring companies are here at this event to support the student competition, but they are also looking for the best talent coming out of the universities that are competing.
Saturday Morning Job Fair and Awards:
At 8:00 AM the job fair begins where sponsoring contractors have booths setup in the main hall where they are able to meet with students and discuss opportunities with their company. There were over 100 contractors set up to meet with students. Job offers are made to graduating students and internship opportunities are available to students that won’t be graduating until 2026 or beyond. The students are able to get a closer look at the companies that they are interested in and talk with current employees and managers. This allows them to get to know each other and determine if it is a good fit for both employer and potential employee.
The awards ceremony starts at 10:00 AM with the problem sponsor contractors presenting the awards to the winners of first, second and third place. All of the teams are there to cheer on teams from their schools. This is followed by the student lunch and then it is departure time to return to their respective schools to catch up on what they missed while they were at the competition and finish up the school year with seniors looking forward to graduation and starting their careers. Those not graduating are planning for next year’s competition and how to repeat their success from this year or improve and take home a first-place trophy.
Acknowledging the Past and Embracing the Future of Construction Professionals:
As the AEC industry works to build ever more efficient, user-friendly facilities it is critical that the professionals in the field have received the best education possible. ASC will continue to help develop construction professionals that can deliver these facilities. Software, drones, robotics and other technologies will continue to change the construction site at a record pace. ASC will lead the way in these technologies being implemented in the field by construction professionals educated at ASC Schools. There should be no question that these students’ past and present are professionals. Without their expertise the built environment that we have now and in the future would not be possible.
More information on ASC can be found on their website: www.ascweb.org
