Competing in front of a live jury and audience at the Design-Build Conference & Expo in Philadelphia, the shortlisted teams from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, University of Oklahoma and Washington State University defended their design and construction plans for a student health and wellness facility on a liberal arts college campus in the Northwest United States. A jury of eight judges evaluated teams based on their delivery solutions and demonstration of team collaboration and synergy to solve design-build problems. The finalists varied in their solutions to approaching the project, but the overall scores were extremely close — a three point difference between first and third place.

The team from Washington State University, competing under the name Alliance Construction, was named the winner of the 2017 competition. Milwaukee School of Engineering placed second and University of Oklahoma placed third.

The competition began at the regional level with 29 teams of students from 26 universities competing.  Student teams from leading design, construction and engineering universities across the country entered the competition to demonstrate design-build best practices by proposing a delivery solution to design and construct a student healthy facility on a liberal arts college campus. Nine regional winners were selected to compete in the second phase of the competition by responding to an RFP and the top three finalists were selected to present in Philadelphia.

The Washington State team included students from the Design + Construction  Department at the university:

David Chun, Construction Management
Tucker Jones, Construction Management
Collin Schweikl, Landscape Architecture
Frederick Stidhams, Architecture and Construction Management
Kelli Young, Interior Design

Faculty Advisor: David Gunderson, Ph.D., DBIA,  Associate Professor, School of Design and Construction, Washington State University