Frequently Asked Questions

How confidential is my submission?

All judges have signed an NDA and will not disclose any information contained in your submission. ASCE will not disclose any information except the title and forward-facing abstract without the Lead Recipient’s permission.

Can Graduate students participate?

YES! We want to encourage all students to participate and we want the best innovative submissions, however since graduate students frequently have more resources than undergrads, teams with graduate students will be limited to one of the three finalists spots for each region.

What is the scoring process?

Local Judges will be selected from local entrepreneurs, ASCE senior members, ASCE shark experts, and other qualified subject matter experts. Every submission is analyzed according to the desired content and criteria listed above and a score is given for each of the three main criteria:

1. Innovation and Creativity (40%)
2. How important to society/customer (30%)
3. Technical Feasibility (30%)

Who attends the ASCE Annual Convention event?

The American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Convention is the Society’s premiere membership event. It is the single annual opportunity where the entire Society joins together reflecting the diversity that ASCE encompasses. The Convention program is designed to have integrated, multi-disciplinary, technical, and educational components to meet the needs of the profession.

How long will it take me to fill out the application?

Last year's teams took between 20 and 30 hours to complete their 5 page summary submission. Per their request, we have broken the 5 page summary into sections they can upload over the course of the winter and early spring. This makes it easier to do in smaller chunks, plus does not compete in the spring with exams or other regional contest activities. As a bonus, the students can receive feedback during each section submission over the winter so they can update and improve their submission several times before handing in their submission at the final deadline.

How many winners are there?

For the Student Regional competitions, there can be up to two finalist per region who advance to the Finals. This year with five regions participating, we will have as many as ten finalists competing at the 2020 Student Innovation Contest Finals at the annual convention.

How much detail should I provide?

Please review the list of desired content and the characteristics sought. Write about your innovation by addressing each of those elements. Your uploaded material or poster should spell out the information suggested for a good submission.

While the information may be technical, applicants do not get extra credit for trying to show everybody how smart they are with complicated and technical only information. Write as if your readers have some but nominal engineering expertise. Write clearly and concisely. Try to limit each section to a half page (knowing you may go longer). Remember a good submission will have several sections: define the problem, market potential, competition, innovation and uniqueness, product use and product benefits.

If I win the region, I am expected to attend the Contest Finals at the ASCE Annual Convention, but I cannot pay for the travel or lodging?

ASCE pays an expense stipend for each winning team to defray their travel expenses. For more information please contact the Contest Chair or Coach.

What is the difference between the primary contact and the lead submitter?

The primary contact and the lead submitter may be the same person or two separate people. The first person who set up the account becomes the primary contact; however, the person who set up the account may not be the team lead or owner of the innovation. The lead submitter is considered the team lead or owner/lead author of the innovation. If the submission wins an award, we will follow up with the lead submitter about next steps. If the primary contact is a different person, we will copy the primary contact and all team members on the next steps message.

May I resubmit a proposal from the last contest?

No, if you were one of our winners from a previous contest.

Yes, if you did not win previously. Please review our guidance on the “elements of a good submittal” to insure your submission will be competitive. In addition, you may request feedback on previous submitting.

When will I know if I won or not?

Student Regional winners will be decided at the regional event and announced at the awards banquet.

When is the 2019 ASCE ANNUAL Convention Event?

The celebration event will take place at Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim California October 28-31,. 2020

Why are there so many deadlines?

Students have suggested that we take the application process and break it down into sections with feedback. Feedback was only provided to each regional finalists last year but we've arranged for the Coach to provide feedback to students before their final submission so they can put their best foot forward. Rather than complete the entire application and then get coaching that because you may have gone in a counterproductive direction, the coach is available for periodic feedback as you build the application. This way you can improve as you build that application. Students can obviously miss one or all of the coaching sessions and still participate, and we suspect that many will.

How many ideas can I submit?

Each team submits one idea for final consideration. When you first submit however, you can submit multiple ideas and the Coach will provide feedback on the initial ideas.

How many teams can enter from their school?

Each school can have only one team finalist but the team size is not restricted.

What should I prepare for the "poster pitch" at the regional conference?

The judges will have seen your 5 page online summary, so there is no need to go over everything again. Concentrate on the big issues for your presentation. The items in bold below are the most important things for the poster. You don't need to cover every aspect of your summary on the poster, some things need just be mentioned and not visualized. If you have space on your poster and want to provide a short statement or image about the secondary topics, feel free to do so.

1. what problem are you solving, why is it a problem?
2. what is your solution and what makes it unique?
3. who has this problem and is this a big problem in the marketplace that effects a lot of people?
4. what is it costing them in time, resources, money, labor, opportunity costs, etc. what will the marketplace be able to do now that they couldn't do before?
5. how will you make your customers aware of this and take it to market? strategic partnership? license? manufacture?
6. what is next step regarding prototyping, testing, validating? how much will an MVP cost (Minimum Viable Product) to build and test?

Remember- incorporate the feedback from the judges!!

Again, there are some things that you described in the summary that don't need to take up valuable space on the poster like market and capitalization. But be prepared to talk about these things.