Structuring Success: How Cal Poly’s Team Designed Victory in the 2024 Timber-Strong Design Build™ Competition

Nick Mackechnie, a senior at Cal Poly majoring in civil engineering and minoring in mathematics, recounts his project management role on his Timber-Strong Design Build team, which won at the 2024 Pacific Southwest Symposium. This event challenges engineering students to design and construct a two-story wood-framed building, providing practical experience in structural engineering and project management. Nick discusses navigating the complexities of design, team dynamics, and unique collaboration while sharing valuable lessons and insights.

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Timber-Strong Design Build Competition — Utah Winners

In this blog post Jacob Cipollini, a civil engineering student from the University of Utah, shares his experience participating in this year’s Timber-Strong Design Build Competition

I’m Jacob Cipollini, a junior civil engineering student at the University of Utah. Our American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student chapter recently won the Timber-Strong Design BuildSM Competition at the ASCE Intermountain Southwest Student Symposium. This event was sponsored in part by Simpson Strong-Tie.  Continue Reading

Timber Strong Gives Engineering Students Real-World Experience

Structural engineering, like every other research field, advances by educating new generations of students in the principles and practice of the discipline. Knowing that, Simpson Strong-Tie has teamed with the Binational Softwood Lumber Council and the American Wood Council to co-sponsor and coordinate the Timber Strong Design-Build Competition, an annual design contest held at the ASCE Pacific Southwest Conference in Tempe, Arizona.
Engineering students will test their civil and environmental engineering skills this spring when they compete in the annual Timber Strong Design-Build Competition. Eighteen universities will send teams of students to Tempe, Arizona, to participate at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Pacific Southwest Conference (PSWC).
The objective of the competition, taking place April 12–14, is to give students valuable real-world engineering design experience:
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