A four-person team of construction management students from Sacramento State earned first place in the Design-Build Institute of America’s competition in their second attempt in two years.

Professionals in the design field provided competitors with a construction site on a college campus and asked them to create an imaginary design for a residence hall.

Construction management students Neil Devlin, Javier Mederos, Nick Staykow and Alyssa Zayas were required to create a design and implementation plan that met all the competitions limitations while protecting existing trees and a creek that could be affected by the build site.

“It was about as realistic as it gets,” Staykow said. “They sent over to us some qualification criteria that we have developed and there was a strict deadline with this competition as there is with real life. If you don’t turn in your package on time, you are disqualified.”

Staykow worked as site superintendent and was responsible for planning the placement of trailers and restricting disturbances to campus life during the construction process.

“My other role was advising the quality and safety plan for our employees and existing student and faculty,” he said. “Within that, we incorporated a sustainable construction process into our plan, basically so we could use manpower as efficiently as possible on that site.”

Professionals from across the country judged the first round of the competition based on proposals the teams wrote, answering a request for qualification from judges and describing their teams approach to the project.

“It is a national professional organization that supports students in the competition,” said Mikael Anderson, chair of the construction management department. “It’s as real life as they can get.”

Devlin was responsible for the project’s schedule and supervised components after construction started. The preliminary proposal describing the team’s ideas was written by Mederos.

“We were a company trying to bid this job to win,” Devlin said. “They played the role of the owner. They gave us quite a bit of information. We basically followed all the steps and the fine print that a company would do in the real world.”

The western region received proposals from 40 teams in the, but one team from each of the seven national regions were invited to participate in the second round of competition last month.

“It is evaluated by design professionals in the industry and based on the proposal only [judges] invite [teams] to the competition,” Anderson said.

The seven teams that made it to the second round were required to present to judges

“It really blew us away all the support we had from the western region,” Devlin said. “Everyone from all the professionals from California and our region were cheering us on and giving us praise. It was an honor.”

Team members spoke for 10 minutes and answer questions a clients had, Staykow said.

Zayas said the group has improved over the two years Sac State has participated, with minimal coaching and a full class load.

“Two years ago I would have said [public speaking was] nerve-wracking,” Zayas said. “But each year we’re more prepared. We learn from the previous year, but now its just butterflies because I’m more prepared than ever.”

Kayla Nick-Kearney can be reached at [email protected]