Construction Management Team Places Fifth in International Student Competition
“The entire experience was just unbelievable. It was as realistic as it gets."
Utica University placed fifth out of 29 colleges and universities from across the United States and Canada in the Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA) Student Chapter Competition.
The annual competition, which is staged over a 12-week period this past fall semester, challenges student teams to develop a bid for a real-world, complex, and high profile building project. The assignment provides students an opportunity to bridge classroom learning with real-world application by challenging their problem-solving, management, and technical skills.
The competition is based off of a real building project contributed by an MCAA member contractor. This year’s project was the construction of a Great Wolf Lodge water park in Naples, Florida.
Teams were provided the professional drawings, specs, and project parameters as well as a submission deadline. From there, the students had to build a full proposal and submit a competitive bid.
Nine Utica University students participated in the competition as a capstone component of their senior seminar. The group included Nick Beratta ’26, Gianpaul Cooper ’26, Aiden Gibbons ’26, Everett Gregg ’26, Joseph Lochner ’26, Nathan MacDonald ’26, Brandon Macri ’26, Mike Rockwell ’26, and Jacob Wright ’26.
The students’ proposal included an executive summary, estimate, schedule, and safety plan.
Gregg says the students’ experience was a positive reflection of the hands-on focus of Utica’s construction management program, a major component of which is internship placements.
“Each one of us had different experiences from internships with different professional companies, and so we brought understanding of every individual aspect of the project,” says Gregg, who completed an internship last summer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The Utica team narrowly missed a final four designation in only the University’s second year participating in the competition. Utica placed 11th last year.
“It was pretty cool that we were able to go head-to-head against some much bigger schools,” Rockwell says, noting the likes of Cal Poly, Purdue, and Maryland – all institutions with enrollments exceeding 20,000 students. “The entire experience was just unbelievable. It was as realistic as it gets – just all of it, from the professional drawings to the RFI process, which was the exact same as they use in the industry.”
The students will be formally recognized this week at the MCAA Annual Convention in Phoenix, Arizona.
