Purdue University virtually hosted the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Construction Institute (CI) Student Conference Competition. “CI is one of nine institutes that represent the ASCE to provide professionals, students, and organizations, resources to enhance skills, grow their network, and shape the future of the civil engineering industry. The vision of the Institute is to be the leader in promoting quality in construction.” Students representing 15 universities located in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin competed in a mock proposal submission including a presentation with proposed approach to the project and project deliverables. Around 400-500 students attend and compete.

Purdue’s ASCE chapter presented Shiel Sexton’s current project on campus, the Purdue Engineering & Polytechnic Gateway building. Shiel Sexton provided bid documents, drawing logs, estimate templates, and minimum schedule requirements for the student teams to utilize as a baseline. This competition “has been developed to provide a construction engineering experience to civil engineering students. CI hopes to challenge students to work ’towards’ something and not just ‘on’ something; to show that project management is less about managing projects and more about leading people”.

Shiel Sexton Project Executive Chris Metzger on the Gateway project explained, “The competition provided real life experiences for the Student Chapters to plan for and prepare an actual bid, proposal and presentation, including preconstruction/construction planning, estimate/bid, schedule, and oral presentation.”

Shiel Sexton has a strong presence on the Purdue University campus and extend our services beyond construction. The Purdue Engineering & Polytechnic Gateway project team was thrilled to work with future construction and A/E students as they explored the amount of work put into the pursuit of construction projects.