A team from George Brown College in Toronto is representing Canada as one of six teams competing in the finals of the 2019 Chartered Institute of Building’s Global Student Challenge in Edinburgh, Scotland at the end of the month.
The competition started in late January and consisted of a number of rounds where the teams were challenged to run their own virtual construction company in a simulated environment using MERIT software.
“Every round our team performed extremely well making really good business decisions, human resources decisions, project decisions and we continued to climb up the ranks until we achieved first place in North America and second place overall in the world (in round two of three of the competition),” explained Benjamin Valliquette, director of innovation & strategic partnerships and IPD project manager at the Gillam Group, who is mentoring the GBC student team competing in this year’s challenge.
“Because of that they are bringing us and another five teams to Scotland to compete live on the world stage in front of the entire delegation of chartered members for the championship title.”
KLMN Construction Group consists of four students in their fourth and final year of the Bachelor of Technology Construction Management Degree program: Juliano Nolfo (captain), Matthew Melaragno, Lindsay Kainer and Wilson Lai. Valliquette is a graduate of the same program.
“I was approached by this team and asked if I could mentor them,” said Valliquette. “This was my first time participating in the competition and I was really honoured and excited to join the George Brown College team. As much as I coach and teach and mentor there is still a lot of personal development and education involved as well.”
This year, 39 teams from four continents entered the competition, testing their strategic, marketing, financial and management skills, developing disciplined decision-making, teamwork and leadership, indicates a CIOB release. The finalists are:
- Kanigara Banu — Universitas Indonesia
- KLMN Construction Group — George Brown College, Canada
- Resilient Construction — Glasgow Caledonian University, U.K.
- Toomer Oaks Construction — Auburn University, U.S.A.
- HOTPOT CREW — Chongqing University, China
- Design & CurStruct — Curtin University, Australia.
The team from Indonesia, who are first-time entrants, are currently leading the competition and have been at the top of the leader board for the entire competition so far. The team from GBC is in second looking to defend the title won by their predecessors last year. Last year was the first year a GBC team participated in the competition and they ended up in first place. The team from the U.K. is currently sitting in third place.
The challenge takes place in stages over months. The “Foundation Years” stage, which kicked off in January, allows teams to learn how to play the game, testing out strategies and refining tactics. The “Early Years” stage starts a few weeks later, with teams playing competitively with other teams around the world, making decisions that influence the success of their companies, explains a CIOB release.
“At the beginning of the game we had to set up a corporate governance, we had to research market conditions, establish operational staffing needs, select target markets, we had to calculate our financial situation in terms of our capital base and our ability to pursue and take on new work,” explained Valliquette.
Each round involved critical decision-making and teams were scored based on those decisions.
“You get scored and points based on decisions you make in terms of economics, human resources, business development, contracts, operational decisions,” explained Valliquette. “All these decisions impact the share price of your company, the return on your investments, the performance of your projects and they also impact the happiness and well-being of your workers. Everything is really integrated and there are interdependencies in the decisions that you make where one decision can be positive in one sense but can hurt you in another sense.”
Valliquette expects the challenges in the final round to be the same as they were throughout the competition but with the added pressure of extreme time constraints.
“During the initial round of the competition we were doing a competition a week,” said Valliquette. “When we go to the competition in Edinburgh, because we’re only going to be there for four to five days, I would imagine the main difference is going to be that we are competing in a tighter timeframe, in a pressure cooker environment. We’ll be having to make these really important business decisions not over a week’s time but within a minute. We’ll just have to have a good reflex and a good gut feeling for things.”
The team is also ready for any other factors and twists that may arise throughout the competition.
“We are ready for anything and everything that the competition can throw at us,” said Valliquette.
The winners of this years Global Student Challenge title and the 2,000 euro prize will be announced at the CIOB’s Presidents Dinner on June 27 in Edinburgh.
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