Construction Management Association earns national honor

Pennsylvania College of Technology’s Construction Management Association was named Student Chapter of the Year during the Associated Builders and Contractors Convention, held March 13-15 in Orlando, Florida.

The ABC Student Chapter of the Year award recognizes an outstanding chapter for its accomplishments in programming, community service, communications/public relations, and interaction with its sponsoring ABC Chapter. ABC Keystone Chapter is the Penn College Construction Management Association’s sponsor.

“While this is a great honor for any student chapter, winning Chapter of the Year is especially impressive for a smaller college’s construction management program,” said Ellyn A. Lester, assistant dean of construction and architectural technologies. “The construction management faculty and their department head, Wayne Sheppard, with the support of their Advisory Board and the ABC Keystone Chapter, have spent many years developing an extremely successful culture that greatly benefits the students. When coupled with a proactive, hardworking group of student leaders, they simply outworked the competition. I congratulate them all!”

Throughout the year, the Construction Management Association holds a variety of activities for its members. It hosts construction industry guest speakers and takes field trips to metropolitan areas surrounding the college – Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Baltimore – where members are introduced to real-world construction projects.

“We see different phases of the construction process while getting to see what we are learning about in the classroom in a real construction project,” explained Noah H. Jumper, of Shippensburg. Jumper is secretary of CMA.

The group’s community service has included a cleanup of the nearby Susquehanna River Walk and Timber Trail; collection drives for donations to the Dominican Republic, where students visited as part of a Global Experience class; landscaping projects; and simple construction projects.

“CMA hosts work projects in the community for students to ease their way into leadership on small-scale projects,” said Morgan H. Littlefield, of Columbia Crossroads. Littlefield is vice president of the student organization.

“We provide these engagements to our members to become the best construction managers they can be while networking as much as possible with alumni and other industry professionals,” he added.

While at the ABC Convention, CMA members were among 25 collegiate teams participating in the ABC Construction Management Competition, placing third in two of the competition’s four subcategories: estimating and project management.

In addition to Jumper and Littlefield, the team comprised Chris A. Fisher, of Middleburg; Dylan B. Whitmoyer, of Muncy; and alternate Eric D. Xander, of Sellersville.

Round 1 of the competition began Jan. 15 when teams received a “request for proposal” based on a real construction project in Fort Lauderdale, Florida: renovation work and new construction at the Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center – including a 27-meter dive tower that became the tallest in the Western Hemisphere.

“Over the first part of the semester, our team worked long days and late nights to prepare for the competition,” Littlefield said.

“The team had to create a company as well as an estimate, schedules, site utilization plans, quality control and assurance programs and a site-specific safety plan,” explained Sheppard, CMA adviser and assistant professor of construction management.

“As a team, we would spend 40-plus hours a week outside of class time and any other extracurricular activities,” Jumper said.

When they arrived at the competition (via a 33-foot recreational vehicle), the students submitted their Round 1 documents and competed in Round 2: responding to several changes and additions to the project.
 

“We had five hours to change our entire proposal,” Jumper explained.

“The judges – industry professionals, including some of the team that built the real-world project – evaluated everything from the first two rounds and made selections for the short list of teams that presented for Round 3 for the overall prize,” Sheppard said.

“Overall, I'm very proud of how our team placed in the competition,” Littlefield said. “I will be taking skills I learned such as time management, working with a team even when tempers flare, and everything I learned about the complexity of an underground commercial pool with me throughout my career.”

“Some of the key items I have learned from this competition include time management, teamwork and improved construction knowledge,” said Fisher, assistant vice president of the Construction Management Association. “I believe these will help me to be an effective and efficient construction manager in the future.”

Jumper said it helped him realize the amount of work and time that go into a construction project.

“I was the only returner for this competition, and I still learned so much,” Jumper said. “This is a real-world application that real construction companies do to win jobs. As construction managers, we are always learning and looking to improve. These experiences will help me once I graduate and get into the construction industry.”

“It was a great experience, and they learned a lot through the competition, the networking and the convention,” Sheppard said. “None of it would have been possible without the sponsorship and support of our ABC Keystone Chapter and the many companies and alumni who donated time and funds to the endeavor.”

To learn more about Penn College’s bachelor’s degree in construction management, call 570-327-4520.

For information about Penn College, a national leader in applied technology education, email the Admissions Office or call toll-free 800-367-9222.