Structural Concrete Competition
The competition offers a stimulating and fun challenge to students, while supporting the curricula of civil and structural engineering departments of UK universities.
Benefits for students
- Opportunity to present your work to prospective employers, some of whom are involved in setting and judging the competition.
- Chance to enhance your portfolio for prospective employers.
- Gain familiarity with current design practises.
- Develop skills in communication, planning and project management, effective distribution of work and collaboration.
Because it is so flexible, Structural Concrete 2025 can easily be incorporated into existing university curricula, with content that reflects an independent project, a group project or a module assessment run over the first, second or both semesters of the academic year.
The challenge
The 2025 project is to design a hotel building which is to be constructed as part of the redevelopment of a former dock area on an estuary close to the centre of a large UK town. The client, a hotel owner and operator, has commissioned an initial structural design from a firm of consulting engineers for the 4-star hotel that is to be known as the Port Aspdin Hotel. The building is to include a conference centre/banqueting suite, a feature restaurant projecting over the water, as well as bedroom accommodation on five floors. Entrants must respond as though they are the engineer responsible within the consultant’s team.
Download competition brief
Judging criteria
Local level:
The competition will operate at two levels. All submissions made at each university will first be judged locally by the academic tutor(s) involved with the project. The winning submission from each university should be entered for the national level of the competition by the tutor.
Only one entry from each university can go forward for final judging at a national level.
National level:
The winning entry from each participating university will be judged at national level using the following generic assessment criteria:
- Compliance with the project brief
- Safety, function, stability and robustness
- Material efficiency and sustainability
- Buildability, constructability and maintainability
- Speed of construction and cost effectiveness
- Imagination, flair, aesthetic appreciation and innovation.
The awards
Please register your interest (see below) in the competition at any time. This will enable The Concrete Centre to keep in touch with you regarding key future dates and any supplementary information that may help you with your submission.
Entry forms must be submitted (via online form or email competitions@concretecentre.com) by 4pm on Friday 13th June 2025 - at this stage you will be provided with a unique reference number to use on the final entry, which will ensure that the entries are anonymous at judging-stage.
The 2025 Structural Concrete competition is now open!
Timeline
Register your interest for the Structural Concrete Competition 2025
To enter the competition the university academic tutor(s) should register the university’s intention to participate.
Testimonials
"Thank you for the opportunity to take part in such a great project competition and for gaining valuable experience that will help us in the future." - Student, 2024 competition
"I would like to extend my sincere thanks to you and the entire organizing team at The Concrete Centre for hosting such a challenging and inspiring competition. It was an incredible experience, and we are truly honoured to have been awarded second prize." - Student, 2024 competition
"Again, thank you for organising such an event and competition. Our students thoroughly enjoyed it! There was a high level of interest from our MSc and MEng students to take part on this since it gives them the opportunity to apply their theoretical and design knowledge acquired in the course to a practical and challenging problem. It also gives students an appreciation of structural concrete new challenges on sustainability, new technologies and client needs.” - Tutor, 2021 competition