03/21/2023

What does it take to judge Engineering Excellence at the National level?

This year, we were lucky enough to have an Ohio participant in the ACEC National Engineering Excellence Awards judging process. ACEC Ohio nominated James Young, City of Columbus Engineer. to serve as a judge and he was selected by the ACEC EEA Committee to participate.  Spending a weekend outside of Washington, DC, to review 159 projects, this was not an easy assignment! We debriefed with James about the judging process and helpful insights to share with our readers!

There was a variety of different kinds of projects submitted to National, including many transportation, municipal, structural, and water resource projects. There were 25 judges from throughout the United States, providing an opportunity to be exposed to many different views and opinions. There was much debate in the projects being promoted in the selection process and it took a bit of time for the group to fully define “excellence”.

Judges were asked to select at least 2 projects to champion. Each judge had to write three persuasive speeches to help the group vote on their sponsored project. Each different round of speeches were 3 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute in length. There were a total of four rounds of voting, and projects were eliminated in each round.

James felt it was great to read about all the projects to see what unique solutions and city/state processes were used to complete a successful project to submit to the National Engineering Excellence Awards. He found great value in the judging process and feels the awards help to create better awareness with our industry and gives opportunity to improve client/owner teamwork. The entire experience was rewarding, and all projects submitted were most certainly worthy of being submitted!