From March 10 to 13, undergraduate engineering students from across the country flocked to McGill University in Montreal, Quebec for the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC). The top two finishers from the Ontario, Quebec, West and Atlantic Engineering Competitions in Team Design, Senior Team Design, Consulting, Communications and Debate brought their game faces for what is easily the most prestigious engineering competition this has to offer, as well as one of the most incredible weekends you could be a part of. This year, as you may remember from the previous recap of the Ontario Engineering Competition, Waterloo sent two teams, competing in Team Design and Communications.
One of the main differences between CEC and previous qualifier competitions is the layout of the competition itself. OEC and WEC (the Waterloo Engineering Competition) are crammed into just under two days, and most of the longer competitions such as Senior Design and Consulting go overnight allowing contestants little sleep. CEC on the other hand had an extra day, and as a result all of the competitions happened during daylight, which left plenty of time to schmooze and booze with competitors from across the country, as well as the faculty Deans from most of the participating schools and several company representatives sent by the sponsors. Oddly enough, there were just as many late nights and just as little sleep had by most of the people in attendance.
The big highlight of the whole weekend for team UW was when the Junior Design team consisting of Shari King, Kornel Niedziela, Marc-Andre Simard and Adam Thagard won the Team Design competition. They were given a total of 4 hours to design and build a prototype for an amphibious vehicle capable of driving over multiple types of terrain including grass, sand and turbulent water. They were measured both on the performance of their prototype as well as the composition of a formal presentation in which they had to describe the various design features of the prototype that they had built.
Other honourable mentions go to Conestoga College, who had already received some honourable mentions for their first place finish at OEC, and only after one year of accreditation. In the Senior Design Competition at CEC, they had to design and build a prototype for a bridge capable of sensing when a boat was approaching and be able to open up to clear a path for it, then sense when the boat was gone and proceed to close. The prototype also had to withstand a substantial amount of added weight that was meant to simulate heavy truck traffic. Conestoga’s team walked away with second place by the end of the night, as well as the W. R. Petri Award for Innovative Design, all of this in their first year of competition!
Regardless of the results, a phenomenal weekend was had by all. It was a great chance to network with some of the best and brightest students, as well as representatives from some of the countries top companies, even if it was over pizza and poutine at 3 in the morning. If you’d like to get involved in competitions, check out the Waterloo Engineering Competition, which is the qualifier for OEC that is run in the Spring and Fall terms.
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