Structville Design Challenge Results (1st Edition)

On 14th of May, 2018, Structville Integrated Services announced the commencement of Structville Design Challenge for civil engineering students in Nigeria. (If you missed it, you can read post HERE). By the special grace of God, the competition has come and gone, and I wish to appreciate everyone who participated in the exercise.

The price money goes as follows;
1st position – NGN 10,000
2nd position – NGN 3,000
3rd position – NGN 2,000

Competition Details
Total number of successful applicants = 20
Total number of scripts submitted by dead line = 14
Total number of accepted scripts = 12
Total number of assessed scripts = 12

Rationale
Human capacity building in Nigeria has become a necessity, and we must all wake up to that fact. The motivation to start up something is one thing, but staying motivated to finish it up is another thing. The main aim of this competition was to steer the younger generation to a path of creativity, curiosity, technical capacity, problem solving, and tenacity. It was also designed to make them optimistic and look forward to a wonderful career in structural engineering.

While assessing the scripts, I made a lot of observations, and I will briefly summarise them using the points below;

(1) A lot of participants disregarded the first instruction of the exercise which was to pay attention to details. A lot of people lost marks by assuming weight of finishes, when the details of the finishes were clearly specified. Other people quoted values and formulars without properly referencing them. This affected a lot of people.

(2) In most cases, there was poor reading and interpretation of the architectural drawing. All those who modified the structure significantly lost a lot of marks.  However, I saw a lot of brilliance in some people with the way they managed the complexities of the architectural drawing, and produced a very good design. Some others came up with interesting GA’s that are stable and buildable, but not very economical, so they lost marks in that aspect. For some others, they came up with GA’s that are good, but did not reflect it properly in their analysis.

(3) No single person from South-East or South-South part of Nigeria participated in the exercise. I hope to see more of them next time.

(4) Finally, structural design is not about evaluating  M/f_cubd² and providing 2Y16, but it is more about the processes that led to the result, and the ability to execute the design economically, with adequate reliability.

So this is the result of the challenge;

I wish to say a very big congratulations to the winners;

1st Position – USMAN UMAR (Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria)
2nd Position – Ogungbire Adedolapo (Osun State University, Osogbo)
3rd Position – Olajide Bukoye (Federal Polytechnic Offa, Kwara State)

We will be celebrating them with their certificates and prize money in our next post. Structville will engage all the participants with corrections, recommendations, and discussion on all aspects of the design. Thank you, and God bless you.