The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many schools all over the to close their doors and consider different remote education options.

According to Mark Schneider, one of the competition organizers, “Since the SMART Competition is offered in a 100% virtual environment, the competition is an ideal opportunity for students to gain a remarkable learning experience without fear of contracting the virus.”

Registered teams are provided the software by Bentley Systems and all design and project tracking elements of the competition are through the SMART Competition interface with Bentley.  When the competition deliverables are complete and it’s time for a team to present its work, those presentations are done using cameras and networking software.  Team members never have to be in the same physical space…never…assuring the virus is not transmitted through proximity.

The Competition is an excellent educational program that compliments studies in sustainability, LEED design issues, and renewable power generation.

The SMART Competition (www.smartcompetition.org) is a global STEM and Career and Technology Education (CTE) education program.  The competition is open to all high school and university students.  The competition is designed to attract all students without regard or bias of gender, race, socio-economic or academic performance level.

For additional information, contact Mike Andrews, m.andrews@smartcompetition.org

Due to the current pandemic, the SMART Competition is modifying the registration and submission deadlines.

“Since the SMART Competition is a global program with all deliverables and project tracking completed in a virtual environment, the competition leadership decided to make all submission dates flexible.  That is, if your team registration was delayed, you can still register now without penalty.”

The Competition will use the date registered as the baseline date for team deliverables.  Judging and team recognition will be based in the baseline date.

The Competition is an excellent educational program that compliments studies in sustainability, LEED design issues, and renewable power generation.

The SMART Competition (www.smartcompetition.org) is a global STEM and Career and Technology Education (CTE) education program.  The competition is open to all high school and university students.  The competition is designed to attract all students without regard or bias of gender, race, socio-economic or academic performance level.

For additional information, contact Mike Andrews, m.andrews@smartcompetition.org

In its inaugural study of the overall market for Collaborative Building Information Management (BIM), ARC Advisory Group ranked Bentley’s ProjectWise system as No.1 worldwide.

The new opportunity is to build on ISO 19650, and GroupBC’s U.K. information management experience, to advance collaborative BIM, through “evergreen” digital twins, to span infrastructure lifecycles.  In combination, Bentley’s iTwin Services will now be leveraged to uniquely connect GroupBC CDEs and ProjectWise CDEs. Through semantic alignment and change synchronization, the resulting digital twins cloud services will securely federate—fully enabling 4D mixed reality and analytics visibility—previously separate CDEs for construction and engineering.

“Our iTwin cloud services, taking advantage of iModel-based solutions for interoperability, are ideal for federating CDEs,” said Keith Bentley, Chief Technology Officer, Bentley Systems.  “This enables us to assure that the users of our BC SaaS services will benefit from further extending the value of their project and asset information through digital twins.  With the help of our new GroupBC colleagues, we will now be able to better serve engineers, contractors and owners by bringing together their collective IT (information management), OT (operational technologies including reality modeling), and ET (engineering models).  I am confident that the resulting improvements in project and asset performance will be consistent with the U.K.’s demanding but welcome expectations for new ROI breakthroughs from digital twins.”

“This is a hugely exciting day for our shared accounts and for both our workforces moving forward,” said Sanjeev Shah, co-founder of GroupBC.  “The opportunities which arise from bringing our two companies and their respective product portfolios together are enormous, as is the global reach which Bentley can now add for us.  Working together we will be even better able to support, through ‘going digital,’ construction and asset lifecycles.”

In addition to providing infrastructure design tools to approximately 800,000 engineers and architects worldwide, Bentley Systems provides the design software used by the SMART Competition.

For additional Competition information, contact Mike Andrews, m.andrews@smartcompetition.org

In response to requests from our participants The SMART Competition timeline has extended the entry deadline 2/22/2020.

SMART Competition Opens a University Competition Division

The SMART Competition (www.smartcompetition.org) is a global STEM and Career and Technology Education (CTE) education program.  SMART hosts two competition divisions:

1. High School
2. University

The University Division is open to all college and university students.

“The Competition is an excellent way to get a head start on your career and profession.”, says Michael Andrews, president of the SMART Competition and Managing Partner of Andrews & Associates. “Teams use the same tools and face the same design challenges as over 800,000 engineering and architectural professionals do every day.”  The software is donated for the competition by Bentley Systems (www.bentley.com).

The Competition is an excellent educational program that compliments studies in sustainability, LEED design issues, and renewable power generation.

The competition is open to all high school and university students.  The competition is designed to attract all students without regard or bias of gender, race, socio-economic or academic performance level.

For additional information, contact Mike Andrews, m.andrews@smartcompetition.org

SMART Competition Registration Continues

The SMART Competition (www.smartcompetition.org) is a global STEM and Career and Technology Education (CTE) education program for high school students.

Registration for the competition began in September. Teams are receiving data files and the virtual model details.

According to Mark Schneider, Global Technical Director – User Workflow Adviser of Bentley Systems, Bentley Systems, “the information that the student teams use is the same type of data engineering professionals, architects and designers are using everyday”.

The Competition is an excellent educational program that compliments classroom learning objectives. The program promotes the application of sustainability, green building design, energy efficiency, renewable power generation and provides the students with the ability to create innovative solutions to a real-world challenge.

The competition is open to all high school students who attend public, private, parochial, charter and home-based schools or participate in informal education programs. The competition is designed to attract all students without regard or bias of gender, race, socio-economic or academic performance level.

For additional information, contact Mike Andrews, m.andrews@smartcompetition.org

In response to requests from our participants The SMART Competition timeline has extended the entry deadline 2/22/2019.

The SMART Competition is recognizing Mission College Prep Catholic School and Teacher-sponsor Ms. Nancy Alcombright for Educational Excellence in this year’s competition.  Ms. Alcombright had a record six teams participating in this year’s competition.  Two of the six teams finished the required deliverables and made their team presentations earlier this week.  One of the teams won 2^nd Place and another won Honorable Mention in the global competition.

According to Michael Andrews, Managing Partner of Andrews & Associates and one of the competition founders, “Ms. Alcombright, the other school administrators, IT staff and other team supporters should be proud of what the students accomplished, learned, shared and imagined.”

Mark Schneider, a co-founder of the SMART Competition and Bentley Systems Technical Director, Integrated Lifecycle Solutions said the “students exceeded the learning objectives of the program.  The student teams that made their presentations demonstrated an understanding of energy, sustainability, collaboration and problem solving”.

Ms. Alcombright also provided competition organizers with student feedback that will be used in next year’s competition.

Student Teams Competing in the Global Finals

Other Participating Student teams

Some of the design changes they made ranged from rotating the building to utilize a modified roof design and adding better shade trees to reduce the heat gain in the building.  The also improved the efficiency of the HVAC system by using water source heat pump systems and introducing an efficient saltwater battery system to the campus.

In addition to team member awards, the school will receive a $500 donation to support its STEM and CTE programs from Bentley Systems.

The SMART Competition (www.smartcompetition.org) is a STEM and Career and Technology Education (CTE) education program that provides high school students with a practical real-world design challenge that addresses sustainability, green design, localized power generation, architecture, the environment and the community.  The competition is open to all high school students who attend public, private, parochial, charter and home-based schools or participate in informal education programs.  The competition is designed to attract all students without regard or bias of gender, race, socio-economic or academic performance level.

For additional information, contact Mike Andrews, m.andrews@smartcompetition.org

The 2017 SMART Competition was a success! The winning team of this year’s competition was from Pius X High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. Team members included
Jeremy Scheffler – teacher – sponsor
Kathleen Medill Natalie Schieuer
Tom Fulton Taylor Geirhan

The design changes they implemented were planned to increase the overall reliability of the equipment and building systems while reducing the costs of operating their school of the future. One interesting research finding noted by the students was that using wind energy would have been less efficient and noisier on their campus. According to Natalie, “We selected solar power because of the expected efficiency supported by Swanson’s Law”. Like Moore’s Law in the integrated circuit and computer chip manufacturing world, Swanson’s Law states that solar photovoltaic modules drop in cost and double in output efficiency every ten years.

The judges were very impressed by the research and implementation plan the students had for their project. According to Paul Wagner, a Bentley Systems Senior LEARNservices Consultant, “The student’s understanding of building information management (BIM) enabled them to make real improvements to the building and the campus that you might expect from more experienced designers.”

In addition to team member awards, the school will receive a $500 donation to support its STEM and CTE programs from Bentley Systems.

The SMART Competition (www.smartcompetition.org) is a STEM and Career and Technology Education (CTE) education program that provides high school students with a practical real-world design challenge that addresses sustainability, green design, localized power generation, architecture, the environment and the community. The competition is open to all high school students who attend public, private, parochial, charter and home-based schools or participate in informal education programs. The competition is designed to attract all students without regard or bias of gender, race, socio-economic or academic performance level.

For additional information, contact Mike Andrews, m.andrews@smartcompetition.org.

The 2016-2017 SMART Competition is continuing to attract global attention.  This year the competition has involved engineers and technical professionals from North and South America, Asia and the European Union.

According to Everett Greenli, SMART Volunteer Coordinator, “we’ve received offers to be a judge, mentor or communications volunteer from individuals with different types of professional specialties”.   He said that while we need judges, providing the student teams with professional guidance is essential.  “Successful student teams need help with problem solving and project management, not just the software used in the competition”.

Bentley Systems (www.bentley.com) provides the software for the competition.  Bentley Systems is a software development company that supports the professional needs of those responsible for creating and managing the world’s infrastructure, including roadways, bridges, airports, skyscrapers, industrial and power plants as well as utility networks.

The SMART Competition (www.smartcompetition.org) is a STEM and Career and Technology Education (CTE) education program that provides high school students with a practical real-world design challenge that addresses sustainability, green design, localized power generation, architecture, the environment and the community.  The competition is open to all high school students who attend public, private, parochial, charter and home-based schools or participate in informal education programs.  The competition is designed to attract all students without regard or bias of gender, race, socio-economic or academic performance level.

For additional information, contact Mike Andrews, m.andrews@smartcompetition.org