ABC Team Earns $3,000 in Prizes

Once again the ABC National Student Competitions saw the UC-Applied Science team soar to the top ranks.

"Our Associated Builders and Contractors team of students returned from the ABC Annual Convention in Honolulu, Hawaii after clinching second in the overall competition," exclaimed George Suckarieh, Applied Science professor and team advisor. "Additionally, Logan Hanneman placed first in the Student Chapter Essay Competition which added another $1,000 to our prize total."

Each year the ABC selects a project completed by a member company and uses the actual data from the project as a benchmark to gauge the abilities of the competing teams from universities and colleges across the country. The 2009 competition project was the Montgomery County Riverwalk and Pedestrian Bridge in Montgomery, Alabama.

Twenty teams accepted the challenge and made the trip to Honolulu to test their skills against each other and the original contractor. Some of the teams making the trip were Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Virginia Tech, LSU, Auburn, University of Florida and University of Washington.

Teams are required to produce three principal items-a Project Management Plan, Safety Plan, and a Project Estimate to complete the work. Teams are scored on each plan plus their bid. The top five teams advance to the final "Presentation Round" of competition. Applied Science teams historically do well in the ABC Competition and then place once reaching the final round.

Getting to the final round takes dedication, a lot of planning and effort. Applied Science team spent more than a month in reviewing the project specifications and requirements, developing their safety and project plans, researching material and labor prices for the area, and learning a number of techniques peculiar to bridge trusses, railroad operations and water construction-all of which affect the project and need to be accounted for in the final plan and bid.

The team landed in Hawaii shortly after midnight (Tuesday morning) and after checking in to their apartment began last minute preparation for the Wednesday Competitive Bid day. "We probably worked 16 to 18 hours straight getting ready for bid preparation the next morning," stated Nick Talkers, ABC Team member. "We attended the bid conference at 9:00 AM and then experienced a really hectic eight hours." In that time the team got bids from subcontractors, last minute adjustments from the customer and rebids from the subcontractors so that they could make their final bid by the deadline-5:00 PM.

Thursday morning the top five teams and their presentation times were posted in the hotel lobby... and there was UC-Applied Science in the top five and scheduled to present at 9:00 AM Friday morning. Preparing for the half-hour presentation with materials and charts adjusted to match the final bid consumed the day and most of the night as well. "Looking out the windows and seeing beautiful weather was really tough but we knew the professionals of the panel would be expecting a first-rate presentation," commented Bill Burwinkel for the team.

"My contribution wasn't needed until our bid was finalized. So I got to enjoy the beach until prep started on Wednesday night for our presentation on Friday," offered Kurt Rouse, AET member of the team. "We want to make sure that our drawings, visualizations and charts are as polished as those of a major architectural firm and put our presentation over the top."

"We learned a lot in this competition," held Nick. "Teamwork is key and I think the main reason we did so well. We got a lot of real world experience on bidding day and in the presentation. The knowledge and insight of the industry professionals of the panel was amazing and caused us to dig into our own experiences and all the research that we did in preparation for the competition."

When asked why the UC-Applied Science team does so well in this competition, the team offered these points-presentations are an everyday part of their course work, projects are expected in many courses (particularly CMIII and Senior Project), co-op provides a deeper understanding of the actual implications of their decisions, and by involving underclassmen as team members there is a good transfer of knowledge from year to year.

Saturday's Awards Breakfast showed the team's success as they walked off with the second place award and its stipend. In commenting on the presentations, one of the panelists indicated that, "... two teams (i.e. UC-Applied Science and the University of Washington) really stood out and choosing between them was our biggest challenge." In addition to the second place overall finish, UC placed second in Safety and third in Project Management.

Saturday was even more significant for Logan Hanneman as he received a first place award in the Student Chapter Essay Competition and its check for his essay titled Value Engineering: A Student's Perspective. In winning, Logan kept the Applied Science streak in tact as Applied Science has won this event every year since its inception.

Picrorial Review of the ABC Team in Hawaii

ABC Competition Team:

Nick Talkers *
Kurt Rouse *
Bill Burwinkel *
Logan Hanneman *
John Lupidi **
Kent Behrman
Greg Christensen
Brant Fischer
Kyle Kalkhoff
Nick Mathews
Mike Schweer
* Member of the ABC Presentation Team in Hawaii
** Member of ABC Presentation Team & Team Leader for 2010

Thank you to the donors who made the competition possible:

Balfour Beatty US (Div. Headquarters)- Charlotte N.C
Danis Construction- Dayton Ohio
Helix Electric - San Diego, CA
Quandel Construction Services - Cincinnati Ohio
Ohio Valley ABC Chapter

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For a print copy of the 2009 ABC Team Story - Click Here

College of Applied Science

www.uc.edu/cas