Meet the Teams Competing in the Canadian National Steel Bridge Competition

The competition simulates an engineering project and allows us to apply our knowledge gained at school. The benefit of participating in this competition is to improve our knowledge about structure modeling and conception, fabrication method, project management, problem-solving and team working. The Hercule team participates in the CNSBC every year because we are passionate students of engineering. We like to innovate, push ourselves out of our boundary and « think out of the box ».

The Canadian National Steel Bridge competition is a great opportunity for students to gain experience in steel design as well as hands-on fabrication experience. This provides our students with an opportunity to get a glimpse into the steel construction industry before they graduate. The insight into every aspect of steel design and construction is invaluable. Students conceptually design and optimize a bridge based on design requirements, and then assess the feasibility of fabricating their design, and ultimately carry out the construction themselves. While being extremely educational for the students, the competition is also a very fun and exciting way to complement the material taught in the classroom.

2019 represented a watershed for the team because it was the first year which it was invited to participate in the Canadian National Steel Bridge Competition, event that represented a huge challenge for the team because it meant that the team would face stronger and more experienced teams in steel bridge competitions. Having said that, being invited back to participate in the Canadian National Steel Bridge Competition is an excellent opportunity to keep challenging us and keep and continue strengthening the team’s skills so that year after year the team can learn from its mistakes and more importantly, each steel bridge competition offers to the students the opportunity to create links with students from others universities and other countries and share engineering experiences which many times, do not learn in the classroom. All the members of the team think that participate in this edition of the competition is the perfect chance to implement what we learned in the last edition.

Our design team provides students the opportunity to apply technical knowledge to practical, hands-on projects that mimic industry standards. Our close-knit team environment allows students to gain design and construction experience through the exposure of the engineering design processes and structural analysis, whilst concurrently familiarizing with industry-standard drafting skills and conventions. Competing at an international level offers students a unique insight into the civil engineering industry outside of Canada and motivates the team to strive to achieve higher every year at competitions.

The Western Steel Bridge Team is a newly-formed team within the engineering faculty at The University Of Western Ontario. The team challenges students to extend their classroom knowledge to a practical steel design project in a hands-on environment. It will provide an opportunity to learn about bridge design, analysis software, and steel fabrication. This will enable students to grow their interpersonal and professional skills, generate innovative designs and foster new relationships.

McGill has not been able to participate for the past 3 years, and so we would love to represent McGill this year at the steel competition. We believe that the steel competition can offer us great opportunity and experience.