A group of civil students recently traveled to Buffalo, New York to participate in the 2018 Association for Preservation Technology Student Design-Build Competition.
Over four days, teams from across North America competed in the competition.
The aims of the competition included inspiring creative thinking, promoting interaction among delegates, exposing students to the fundamentals of analyzing historic timber bridges, and making students familiar with materials commonly used in preservation.
“The whole experience changed my perspective on what it means to be a civil engineer” explains second-year student Kiana Youssefian Sahzabi, one of the UBC Okanagan team members. “Coming out of this experience, I have gained a real appreciation for the idea of building to preserve.”
The team was made up of Youssefian Sahzabi and teammates Maryam Golestani, Anas Salem Issa, Maher Al-Hawarneh, Sherif Osman, Ahmad Rahmzadeh and Qi Zhang.
The team was advised by civil engineering program coordinator Shahria Alam.
According to Alam, conferences and competitions such as this one provide students with a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the discipline. “Whether the students are undergraduate like Kiana or graduate students like some of her teammates, it is an opportunity to network and learn from civil engineers across borders.”
The focus of the conference was preserving historic structures and their settings. The hands-on experience of redesigning and rebuilding the Fallasburg Bridge inspired the UBC Okanagan team to think deeply about not only constructing the bridge, but also the preservation methods essential to prolonging the life of a structure and keeping it safe for users.
The competition took place over various phases. The first two were completed on the Okanagan campus where the team identified, analyzed and designed their bridge. The finals, held at the conference, included on-site building, testing and addressing a preservation challenge.
The UBC Okanagan team placed fourth, and left the conference excited about returning to the competition next year (when the conference is held in Miami, Florida in November 2019).
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