The Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) is the professional association for the development and advancement of construction education, where the sharing of ideas and knowledge inspires, guides and promotes excellence in curricula, teaching, research and service.

The ASC Region 5 – South Central Region is comprised of the colleges and universities offering four-year and two-year construction management, science and technology degrees in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Every year high, achieving Construction Management students are given the opportunity to travel to America and compete in the ASC TEXO Competition and this year Jaden Mialszygrosz, Ariana Llewellyn-Millard and Margarita Sudakova were our the Deakin representatives, kindly sponsored by KANE Construction.

The students have recently returned from America and given the following summary:

We were fortunate to be given the opportunity to represent Deakin University in America for the ASC Region 5 Competition, held in Dallas, Texas. The experience proved to be exciting, challenging and very memorable.

The competition formally ran over three days, however we took some time beforehand to meet up with our American teammates and familiarise ourselves with the competition requirements. Our team included the three of us (all double degree) from Deakin, and three guys from Auburn University, Alabama (one architect, two CM). Their professor came along to guide us, however was not able to give any comment while the competition was running. We were given the opportunity to trial a mock competition, so we could each understand the requirements. This was a good initiative as it made us all realise the scale and intensity of the workload.  

On the day of the competition, at 7am sharp, a request for tender for a design and build project was sent out to the nominated team member. From there, we had 16 hours to submit a proposal which included design drawings, and design narrative with fleshed-out sustainability principles as per LEED gold standard, our company profile and individual CVs, full cost plans, schedules and site logistics and safety. This was submitted at 11pm in the form of a PDF document. The next day, we had time to recover and prepare our presentation for the panel, which included a 20 minute speech and question time. The following day we formally presented to a panel of five from the sponsoring design and construct company, who asked us detailed questions on how we planned to run the project and manage different stakeholders. This presentation was followed by a debrief from the company, who took us through how they had managed the proposal in real life. They announced the competition winners during a formal dinner, and while we were not victorious, we were satisfied we had given it our best shot. We learned a lot about company presentation, teamwork and the design and construct process. We were also exposed to different terminology, and unique challenges such as scaling drawings in inches and feet.  

Given the opportunity to fly over to America, we were able to make the most of the trip and take some time before the competition to travel around Texas. As a group, we met up in Houston to see the NASA Johnson Space Centre, which was an epic experience. We also visited some of the city’s iconic architectural contributions, such as the Mies van der Rohe Museum of Fine Arts, the Rothko chapel, and we stumbled across Philip Johnson’s Chapel of St Basil while walking around the city.   Two of us visited the cities of San Antonio and Austin, with an excellent blues live music scene, ancient spanish missions such as the Alamo, and some of the best tacos we’ve ever eaten.   During our time in Dallas with our American team mates, we visited the historical centre of Fort Worth, where cowboys ride through the streets lined with saloons and honky-tonk bars. And yes, we all bought boots.  

We were given the opportunity to meet some excellent, interesting people and experience a culture which is just slightly different to our own in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. While not as exotic as some places, America is an amazing place to visit, where the iconic becomes the everyday.

Jaden Mialszygrosz, Ariana Llewellyn-millard and Margarita Sudakova