A high school team from the Dallas, Texas, area and a middle school team from Kansas City, Missouri, are the top winners in the national “Construction Challenge” competition sponsored by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM). Earning runner-up honors were high school teams from Perry, Oklahoma, and Oley, Pennsylvania, and middle school teams from New Carlisle, Ohio, and Graham, Washington.
More than 40 finalist teams participated in three separate challenges during the competition, which took place May 20-23, 2009, at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville during the Global Finals competition of Destination ImagiNation (DI). DI is a challenge partner.
The student teams had qualified for the finals at one of 15 regional rallies held earlier in the year across the United States and Toronto, Canada. Since then, they had been designing, building and preparing for the national competition.
The students competed in these three challenges:
Challenge 1: Infrastructure PR Campaign – Teams researched local infrastructure issues in their communities, proposed infrastructure improvements, and held live PR events to develop community support.
Challenge 2: Manufacturing Design: Free Flow – Teams designed remote-controlled equipment to move materials to guide 300 gallons of water down a 32-foot course into a specific tank.
Challenge 3: Service Tech: Piling it On! – Teams engineered a modular remote-control piece of equipment to move and stack boxes in a head-to-head Challenge. Teams had to make two repairs on their equipment, one of which required the technician of the opposing team.
