Civil Engineering students win 2012 Structural Concrete Competition

Run by the Concrete Centre the challenge was to design a hotel building 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 six storey hotel included a feature restaurant to be constructed over the dock at 1 ^st floor level.  The brief included the provision of conference facilities at ground floor, so the load from the buildings above had to be transferred in some way over the wider spans required at ground floor.

The Southampton team: Nicholas Barrett, Calum Lawrence, Andrada Ioana Tabrea, and Joseph Garlick, used deep beams to transfer the load at first floor and provided a ribbed slab to reduce the self-weight of the upper floors in comparison to the weight from flat slabs. Their entry was judged to be particularly structurally efficient.

One of the winning students, Joseph Garlick, comments: "I found the competition an interesting addition to the third year group project. We were all shocked when we found out we had won. Participating in this competition will help to prepare me for the competition I will face in the future after university. The books that we won in the competition will be useful during our final year group project."

The brief formed one of the design projects available in the Year 3 Design Module (CENV3015 Design 3).

The competition was jointly won by Herriot Watt University.