DBIA’s National Design-build Student Competition provides young design-builders the opportunity to create a project as a team, present it to some of the industry’s leading pros and earn national recognition for their good work.

Student teams first compete on a Regional level by responding to the Request for Qualifications (RFQ). RFQ responses are judged by a Regional industry panel including architects, engineers, contractors and owners in the competition Region. Each Region will then select a first-, second- and third-place winner. Regional first-place winners then move to the second phase of the competition and receive $1,500 in support of travel and expenses, including complimentary conference registration, to attend the 2017 Design-Build Conference & Expo in Philadelphia in November.

The first-place Regional winners will be issued the Request for Proposal (RFP) which will be evaluated by a National Judging panel. From the responses to the RFP, three (3) teams will be short-listed to present their proposals to the National Judging panel at the 2017 Design-Build Conference & Expo in Philadelphia. The National first-place team from the three short-listed teams will receive their national award at the 2017 National Design-build Conference & Expo in Philadelphia.

This year’s National Design-build Student Competition project is a student health and wellness facility on a liberal arts college campus in the Northwestern United States.  You can see more details on the project here.

DBIA’s student competition provides an unparalleled opportunity for students to meet leaders in the design-build industry.  Team captain of last year’s winning team, Doug Alleman from the University of Colorado Boulder,  says winning DBIA’s design-build competition can be a selling point for students after graduation, “As a student, you don’t get a lot of chances to talk to the higher-ups within an organization.  Often you don’t get to talk to the true ‘decision-makers’ of a company.  In presenting yourself in front of a group of industry professionals, you can display your talents to a wide-array of those decision-makers.  If you do well, they seek you out and want to get to know you.  I think being in the top three allows you the reverse of normal students.  Rather than you trying to seek out a job, people seek you out to offer you a job.  We had at least one person say, ‘If you want a job, you have one with Company X.’”

Do you know a design-build student?  Spread the word and encourage our future design-build leaders to get a head start on their careers by registering their teams at dbia.org.