Make room for another University of Florida 2025 National Championship. The Eckhoff Steel Bridge Team made history again last week, capturing its fifth consecutive national title. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The championship marks the UF team\u2019s seventh first-place win since 1997, the most wins by a single team in the competition\u2019s 33-year history. The team also scored second-place wins in 1995, 2005, 2008 and 2019, as well as placing third in 2003 and 2016. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Held at Iowa State University, the American Institute of Steel Construction\u2019s (AISC) Student Bridge Competition ran May 30-31, challenging 43 college teams to build lightweight bridges with cost efficiency, design efficiency and speed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur competition assembly time was the fastest in over 100 practice sessions, a remarkable achievement considering the hundreds of spectators who gathered to watch the University of Florida construct the bridge,\u201d noted Taylor Rawlinson, Ph.D., the team\u2019s faculty adviser and director of the Weil Hall Structures & Materials Laboratory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe entire venue fell silent during our build, with audible gasps during impressive parts of the run.\u201d<\/p>Taylor Rawlinson, faculty adviser <\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n UF team members assembled the bridge over a 13-foot area over a river (up from 8 feet in earlier competitions), using temporary spans, creative-piece staging and choreographed construction. Unlike most teams, UF avoided using costly barges during construction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe entire venue fell silent during our build, with audible gasps during impressive parts of the run,\u201d Rawlinson said. \u201cThe assembly team’s ability to execute under such immense pressure is a testament to their practice and the overall team support in practice sessions.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n UF\u2019s team took first place overall, followed by Lafayette College and Virginia Tech. UF also won first place in Structural Efficiency and Stiffness categories, second place for Construction Economy and Place Lightness, and third place in Cost Estimate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe were pretty excited,\u201d said Damian Blanco, a recent Civil Engineering graduate who, with Emma Robert, served as project manager. Blanco is now working at PCL Construction repairing steel bridges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The competition\u2019s goal is to create a lightweight bridge that bends minimally and assembles quickly while meeting specific load and size requirements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The 43 teams at the competition represented the top competitors that advanced from 20 regional competitions in March and April, noted Kristi Sattler, Ph.D., the university education manager for AISC. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With five consecutive titles out of a record-setting seven titles overall, what is UF\u2019s secret sauce? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe ask ourselves that, too,\u201d said John Willetts, an incoming senior in civil engineering and the team\u2019s fabrication and welding lead. \u201cAt the end of the day, this team puts in the time. They tend to sacrifice a lot.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n UF\u2019s Eckhoff Steel Bridge Team consists of Blanco, Robert, Willetts, Victor Levin, Thomas Steinbach, Maxwell Fletcher, Artem Egorov, Sebastian Spence, Saharah Alamgir, Lance Chen, Nathaniel Riker, Donald Stowell-Moore, Anthony Perez-Ortegon and Thomas Mackle. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Eckhoff Steel Bridge Team has captured its fifth consecutive national title.\u00a0The championship marks the UF team\u2019s seventh first-place win since 1997, the most wins by a single team in the competition\u2019s 33-year history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":36945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-templates\/single-sidebar-none.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"featured_post":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[25,35,43,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engineering-education","category-featured","category-honors-awards","category-stories"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n