By Jackey Locke

Two engineering student teams finished second at the recent Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC), hosted by the University of Waterloo.

Michael Cooper, Luke Tremblett, Brett Vokey and Ian Baggs placed second in the consulting category, while fifth-year David Grainger and Luke Dyer won second place in the communications competition category. All are fifth-year mechanical engineering students.

First-place wins this past February at the Atlantic Engineering Competition (AEC), hosted by Dalhousie University, earned them a spot to compete at the national competition.

Like AEC, CEC is divided into eight categories:, senior and junior design, innovative design, communications, programming, re-engineering, parliamentary debate and consulting.

“When competing against the brightest students across Canada, I believe MUN sometimes gets overlooked,” said Mr. Cooper. “However, with representation from four different teams at the competition and our success in our respective categories, we certainly turned heads at this year’s competition.”

Consulting category

The consulting problem focused on climate change and its effects on adverse weather conditions. Teams were presented with cases of storms that negatively impacted the infrastructure in the Greater Toronto Area. They were tasked with creating an implementation plan for flood prevention infrastructure that should be implemented within the area.

“We were given eight hours and a theoretical budget of one billion dollars to devise a five-year implementation plan to remediate Toronto’s flooding problems,” explained Mr. Cooper. “Drawing from global experience, we examined flood plans being implemented in the Netherlands and recent projects in Tokyo and Texas to devise a multifaceted solution which considered the technical, social and environmental impacts of the problem.”

Communications category

In the communications category, competitors had to describe an applicable process or issue and form a coherent argument to clearly identify social, economical, technological and environmental impacts. Competitors prepared the topic prior to the competition and answered questions in front of a panel of industry professionals. Mr. Grainger and Mr. Dyer gave a 30-minute presentation outlining an offshore oil production process along with its economical, political, social and environmental impacts on the world.  

“Speaking on behalf of all competitors that attended CEC, the opportunity to showcase what we’ve learned throughout our degree on a national level was an unforgettable experience,” said Mr. Cooper. “The competition provided an opportunity to make connections with students from across the country, who, like us, will soon be a part of the global workforce.

“Similarly, the competition allowed students to interface with industry professionals by meeting sponsors and the organization of a formal career fair which has already provided exciting job leads for those who attended.”

“Congratulations to Michael, Luke, Brett, Ian, David and Luke for their impressive second place finish in the Consulting and Communications competitions,” said Dr. Greg Naterer, dean, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. “We are very proud of their success, and they are all great ambassadors of Memorial Engineering.”

In total, 13 students from Memorial competed at the CEC.

With files from Michael Cooper.