Steel Bridge Competition Part 1: All you need to know before taking action

A draft of the bridge my team designed that is drawn in Tekla Structures 

Every continent/region has their way of student steel bridge competition. The first thing that will pop-up when you google it would be the one sponsored by AISC which takes place in the United States. I didn't have chance to participate in that one due to heavy work load in grad school but a very close classmate of mine did. However, I was lucky enough to participate in the one that took place in Turkey which was organized Bogazici University. Here I will list a few things you need to know before deciding to attend the competition.

   1. Do you have the interest?

I would like to talk about it in 2 parts. When I decided to attend the competition, very few wanted to take part because past few years our school didn't get a good position. Another reason was everyone's priority was graduating on time and not bother about extracurricular activities. 

What I observed in United States is students try to get involved in such competitions on their sophomore year (2nd year). This actually means as soon as they know they know they are studying civil engineering for their degree they look for a way to get into more hands on projects and steel bridge is most popular one.

   2. Are you willing to take responsibility?

It doesn't matter if you are a sophomore or senior, it all comes down to "are you willing to take the responsibility". Will you make it to meetings and contribute to meetings. Of course no one would expect a sophomore and senior student to have similar technical knowledge. At this point younger student should come up with broader understanding of the topic and can help summarizing the rules etc and older students should combine such with their technical knowledge and analysis tools they have for the project.

   3. Will your institute prove funding?

This is one of the most important topics. Students at Texas A&M University would get 1 year license for SAP 2000 if they were in the steel bridge group. Also purchasing the steel, attending the conference/ competition etc all requires some cost. At Tamu this was done by donations and by ASCE Student Chapter.

In my home institute, because it was a small school we got very limited funding for the project. Luckily the company I had my internship the summer before the semester was kind enough to sponsor us for steel purchase and manufacturing. They let us in to the for a week and we were able to use equipments with the guidance of person in charge.

If all of the above is available, move on and get into the nearest competition with group of students with similar interest. Here is part 2 of the topic, what to do during design phase?