A team of Seattle University students who analyzed the structural needs of a warehouse at Seattle City Light's Skagit Hydroelectric Project and designed a retrofit for the building have won a seond national award for their work.
The Sickler warehouse project team.
A team of Seattle University students who analyzed the structural needs of a warehouse at Seattle City Light’s Skagit Hydroelectric Project and designed a retrofit for the building have won a seond national award for their work.
The team took second place in the Structural Engineering Institute’s 2013 Student Structural Design Competition, which included a $500 prize. Team members were Aimee Corn, Thomas Lynam, Maureen O’Sullivan and Rachel Vranizan with Faculty Advisor Katherine Kuder.
They developed a structural evaluation of City Light’s Sickler warehouse building at the Skagit Hydroelectric Project in Newhalem. They designed retrofit concepts for improving the building’s structural stability and energy efficiency and evaluated those options. Their project was sponsored by City Light Senior Civil Engineers Robert Cochran and Owen Kohashi and Senior Capital Projects Coordinator Tom Pulford.
City Light used the students’ work as the basis for plans to upgrade the building.
Structural Engineering Institute judges scored finalists on a combination of written submissions and oral presentations during the organization’s conference in Pittsburgh.
Earlier this year, the students made up one of two Seattle University teams mentored by Seattle City Light engineers that each won $7,500 prizes in the 2013 National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) Engineering Awards for Connecting Professional Practice and Education.
City Light employees have mentored engineering students at Seattle University’s Project Center for 15 years in an ongoing partnership that provides real-world projects for the students and highlights career opportunities at the utility.