After coming up short in the finals last year, the team Seminole State College of Florida finished what it started this year by taking home the top prize in the 2019 National Design-Build Student Competition. The finals of the competition, which take place every year at the Design-Build Conference & Expo, involved three teams of finalists presenting their design and construction plans for a fictitious Performing Arts Center on an American college campus in front of a jury and live audience.
This year’s competition was close with only a few points separating the three teams. Following the winning ‘Tekton’ team from Seminole State was Oklahoma State University in second place, while the team from the NewSchool of Architecture & Design took third place.
The competition began with 35 teams of students from 27 different universities competing at the regional level. Student teams from leading design, construction and engineering universities across the country once again entered the competition to demonstrate design-build best practices, proposing their own unique delivery solutions for this year’s project. Nine regional winners were then selected to compete in the second phase of the competition by responding to an RFP, and the top three finalists were then selected to present in Las Vegas.
The winning Seminole State team was comprised of members from the School of Engineering, Design and Construction at the university:
Michael Miller, Construction
Jeffrey Stout, Construction Management
Windy Pierre-Louis, Construction Management
Tiffany Theodore, Interior Design
Tamara Noftsinger, Interior Design
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Tan Qu, Professor, Construction Program Manager, Seminole State College of Florida