We are pleased to announce that Kennedy/Jenks Consultants has become a “Tommy” sponsor of USC ASCE for 2014-15 with their donation of $500. Kennedy/Jenks Consultants provides engineering and scientific solutions for water, environmental, energy, and innovative projects to government agencies and private utilities, industry and business, federal programs, and transportation clients. Their sponsorship will provide the remaining funding necessary to support our design teams as we quickly approach our annual competition, PSWC.
We are pleased to announce that the PENTA Building Group has become a “Cardinal & Gold” Sponsor of USC ASCE for 2014-15 with their donation of $1,000. The PENTA Building Group is a general contractor that specializes in hospitality/entertainment, gaming, education, healthcare, and tribal. They recently finished the major renovation of the SLS Hotel & Casino, formerly known as the Sahara. PENTA will also be on USC campus this coming semester, remodeling part of the USC Davidson Conference Center at the corner of Jefferson/Figueroa. Although PENTA is based in Las Vegas, they also have regional offices in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Tulsa. PENTA is excited to be sponsoring our USC team in April at the 2015 ASCE Pacific Southwest Conference.
We’re pleased to announce our first “Tommy” sponsor for 2014-15: Hall & Foreman, a division of David Evans and Associates, Inc. Hall & Foreman provides engineering, surveying, and land planning solutions for clients throughout Southern California. As a sponsor, they will fund our design teams, allowing them to continue their steady growth in recent years at the PSWC 2015 competition in April.
We’re pleased to announce our first sponsor for the 2014-15 academic year: Patrick Lumber Company. Patrick Lumber is a lumber distributor, exporter, and re-manufacturer specializing in Vertical Grain Doug Fir, Western Red Cedar, Southern Yellow Pine, Hemlock, and more since 1915. As a Cardinal and Gold Sponsor, they will provide valuable funding to support our Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge projects and our USC team at the 2015 ASCE Pacific Southwest Conference.
We’ll be opening up nominations for next year’s USC ASCE Executive Board later this week, with voting occurring the following week. Interested in taking on a leadership role? Keep an eye out for the election emails!
Haha, just kidding. Unlike the Concrete Canoe competition, steel bridge is very secretive, and we’re not going to disclose any information about our team’s status. Want to find out about our bridge? Come check it out next week at PSWC!
Our Steel Bridge team is working hard to finish building their top-secret design by March 1st. This will allow plenty of time to tweak and finish the bridge, as well as practicing assembly for the competition. We’re excited for PSWC 2014 and will be selecting our competition team in the next few weeks.
We’ll be at the Viterbi New Student Luau tomorrow (Thursday, August 22nd, 2013) to greet all of the incoming civil and environmental engineers and tell you more about ASCE. Be sure to stop by our table and say hi!
Everyone’s finishing up last minute details for PSWC 2013, which starts tomorrow. Canoe team wrapped up aesthetics, our display board and engineer’s notebook. But—in a concrete canoe first—we had to make one last batch of concrete. But don’t worry, it was just to re-finish the cross section. It would never work to put new concrete on the canoe this late in the game. Steel bridge team finished up bridge painting and did their display board tonight. And the environmental team finished strategizing for their 8am Thursday competition, while other team members created the display board and other documentation. Meanwhile, our e-board finished orchestrating all of the logistics for the conference (since we’re hosting). Everything’s coming into place, and we’ll be back at it bright and early (in like 4 hours) to get everything for the first day of competition.
In order to work within our limited budget, we need to get creative with our materials. So instead of throwing out all of our scraps, we reuse them. This year, our bulkhead molds were built out of the cardboard boxes that our reinforcement shipped in. Our cross-section will be made with a section of last year’s canoe mold. We even re-used bulkhead trimmings to re-fill the holes that we popped in our air pockets in those bulkheads. By recycling our materials, we can maximize our small budget to efficiently build our canoe.
American Society of Civil Engineers Student Chapter at the University of Southern California
