2017 Student Bid Competition Showcases Future Talent

The 2017 NWCCC Student Bid Competition was held on Wednesday, January 25th at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.  This annual event spotlights our top regional Construction Management students from Central Washington University, Oregon State University, Washington State University, and the University of Washington.  Thirty-six students comprising six teams demonstrated their ability to estimate a full-scale renovation project recently completed at the Museum of Flight by BN Builders.  The students presented their written proposal to a panel of judges last week, then presented their proposal in front of nearly 60 NWCCC members at the event and took challenging questions from both the judges and the membership.

Everyone in the room was highly impressed with each team’s performance, particularly with the ability of the students to deliver thoughtful answers to some difficult questions.  The future is indeed bright for both regional owner and contractor firms looking to refill or add to their construction management talent pool.

In the end, the judges deemed that the written proposal and presentation given by the Oregon State Mixed-Use team demonstrated the highest ability in assembling a project proposal that included cost estimates, schedule, staffing plans, logistic plans, safety plans, and addressing a challenge encountered by the real project.  Congratulations to Oregon State – this is the first time they will be engraving their name on the traveling trophy!

The NWCCC would like to thank Clark Miller and his staff at the Museum of Flight for hosting our event and allowing use of their project, Travis Caples and Rick Philipovich from BN Builders for volunteering their time and expertise about the project to facilitate the students’ proposal, and to Rick Heilmann of Tesoro, John Komorita of King County DNRP, Rob Harris of JHKelly, and Steve Nelson of Shell for judging the proposals and providing the students with valuable “real world” feedback.  A special thank you goes out to Paul Galeno of King County DNRP for providing the students with excellent early career advice during his lunchtime keynote address.

Join us for our next program on Tuesday, February 21st at the Lynnwood Convention Center as we host three excellent speakers at our “Regional Economic and Construction Outlook” program.