Two former Southern Illinois University Edwardsville engineering students won the third place award in a national structural design competition earlier this month in Pittsburgh.
Winning the award were Luke Potthast and Ryan Holdener for their project, Dalian Office Building. Potthast and Holdener were one of three teams selected to compete in the final round of competition at the 2013 Student Structural Design Competition of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Structural Engineering Institutes (SEI) Structures Congress.
“It was pretty daunting when we submitted our project to the competition,” said Potthast, “knowing that we would be up against some of the largest engineering schools in the country. So, it was very exciting when we learned that we were picked in the top three and were able to represent SIUE at the Structures Congress.” Potthast and Holdener graduated from SIUE with bachelor degrees in Civil Engineering in May 2012.
The engineering faculty selected Potthast and Holdener’s project in January of this year and submitted it to the SEI Structures Congress. The two SIUE alums were mentored by engineers at HOK Design Co. in St. Louis, Mo., for one semester. For more information on the global company based in St. Louis, see hok.com/.
“The Dalian project was provided to us by our host company of HOK,” said Potthast. “It was a project they were currently working on, and they gave us a few preliminary designs to work on separately for our own model.”
The pair designed a multi-story steel structure to be built in China with an estimated cost of $53.7 million, said Dr. Ryan Fries, SIUE assistant professor in Civil Engineering.
“They constructed a digital model using the Building Information Modeling (BIM) software,” said Fries, who co-supervised the project with Dr. Brad Cross, SIUE professor of civil engineering.
Among the many issues to consider when designing the model were the weight of the structure, the weight that might be applied to the building and environmental factors, Fries said.
The competition looked mainly at students’ ability to effectively communicate the project to judges and the challenges or level of difficulty of the design, Fries added.
“There were a few challenges throughout the project,” Potthast said. “The most difficult was learning new software that aided us in designing the building. Another challenge was trying to understand different construction and fabrication techniques that we needed to use in our design to make it a more efficient and cost effective building.
“Lastly, it was pretty difficult giving presentations on the project and keeping it under 10 minutes.”
Potthast and Holdener also had success with this same project when the duo presented it for SIUE’s Senior Assignment Showcase at the end of last spring’s semester, Fries said.
“The faculty recognized then that they went above and beyond in doing a good job for their Senior Assignment,” said Fries.