Waterloo Engineering Competition

The Waterloo Engineering Competition (aka WEC) is a competition, held once a term during the Fall and Spring terms, where teams of four students compete to complete challenges to demonstrate their engineering skill. Four different categories are run as part of the event: Junior Design, Senior Design, Programming, and Consulting. This year, the competition will be held entirely online over a single day, so competitors can join in from wherever they might be located.

The Junior Design competition, open to first and second year students, presents teams with a unique engineering design challenge. All teams then have a set amount of time to design, build, and test their solutions. Afterwards, teams must present and demonstrate their projects to a panel of judges. Similarly, the Senior Design competition pits teams of third and fourth year students against each other to complete a design problem, but places more emphasis on technical ability and knowledge.

The Programming competition requires teams to engineer software that provides a complete solution to a given problem and to demonstrate its functionality and quality to a panel of judges. Finally, in the Consulting competition, teams are given a fixed amount of time to produce a practical solution to a complex open-ended problem that demonstrates social, environmental, technological, and economical resourcefulness, which they must then pitch to the judges. 

Each competition comes with its own constraints and criteria that will challenge each team to create their best solutions and put their engineering mettle to the test. Winners of each competition will have the opportunity to advance to the next stage of competition at the Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC), where they will represent UW as they face-off against competitors from other schools. In addition to advancing to OEC, winning teams will also receive cash prizes and recognition of their achievements.

This is a great chance to test and develop your design thinking, ingenuity, and communication skills. The competition is the perfect place to learn more from your peers, get great hands-on experience, and participate in a real engineering challenge! All engineering undergraduate students are welcome, so keep an eye out for registration forms soon!