The Construction Management Association, a student organization, attends the Associated Builders and Contractors Construction Management Competition every year.

Submitted photo


The five UW-P CMA students placed seventh overall at the Associated Builders and Contractors Construction Management Competition.

Five members of the Construction Management Association at UW-Platteville were accepted out of nine applicants to voluntarily participate in the Associated Builders and Contractors competition held in San Diego Feb. 2-7. These men were accepted based on their work experience, GPA and completed classes relative to the construction curriculum.

The five participants for the ABC competition consisted of senior building construction management majors Brent Beveroth, Mike Shea, Jon Moelling, Jay Moelling and junior building construction major Jordan Quentin.
The event was held at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Convention Center. This year’s project consisted of writing a proposal for a 12-story hotel building in San Diego.

Stage one consisted of the proposal. The five members of the CMA devised a 150-page proposal focusing on how to build a 12-story hotel to hand into the committee of judges. The proposal focused on the project management plan, site utilization plan, safety plan and LEED implementation.

“We all put in a lot of time and effort into this project. We worked on the project for a week straight over winter break and whenever we had free time,” Shea said.

In stage two the men were faced with addendums and elements of change in the project, causing them to revise their proposal in a time span of seven hours. The men later found out that the hotel they were working on, Hotel Indigo, was located two blocks from where they were staying.

“The experience put us in real world situations, we had to think on our toes and make decisions without a whole lot of guidance,” Shea said.

A panel of six judges from the construction industry scored the proposals from the 25 participating teams. It was then narrowed down to eight teams with the highest scores, advancing UW-P to the second level of competition. This was the first time UW-P has made it through the first judging process.

In stage three, four of the five men sat down in front of an audience with the judges and were questioned on the proposal. The men explained their logic behind their proposal and why they chose the methods they did. After all eight teams were interviewed, the judges did a breakdown of the process they used to build the Hotel Indigo, what participants did well on and what could be fixed.

The awards ceremony was held Feb. 6 where the five participants from UW-P placed seventh out of 25 teams and were awarded third place for the safety management division.

“The guys did an outstanding job,” said Mark Albers, building construction management professor and CMA adviser. “I had mentioned a few times to the team that they had created an impressive document, with minimal help from me. I credit their success to being excellent problem solvers, and that all of them had internship experiences that really gave them some real life experience to pull from.”

After the competition was over participants got the opportunity to attend different construction conferences related to the construction industry.

“It was a great experience overall; we did really well and learned a lot. By placing in the competition we helped to recognize UW-P’s construction management program against other big-name schools from across the country,” Beveroth said.

Hensel Phelps Construction Company and the Associated Builder’s and Contractors of Wisconsin sponsored the trip to San Diego.

The next ABC competition will be held in April 2011 in San Antonio, Texas.