‘Building Suspense’ Brings Third Enginuity Title to WSP USA

For the third time in four years, an engineering team from WSP USA has been crowned champion of the international Enginuity competition.

Talk about a team living up to its name! In what organizers called one of the closest finishes in the history of the annual competition, WSP’s “Building Suspense” held off fierce challenges in the 18^th and final round to earn the title of Enginuity 2020 Champion. The team’s final score of 2,970 points was enough to stave off a late surge by the “Jersey Geoengineers” from Parsons, a team that had been leading until “Building Suspense” emerged as a contender in the 16^th round, and the new leader in the penultimate round.

“Building Suspense” includes members from coast-to-coast: Yingying Huang Fernandes, transportation planner in the Seattle office; Brian Kellogg, senior transportation planner in the Seattle office; Umit Can Oksuz, senior bridge design engineer in the Austin office; Rigdha Banerjee, senior consultant and traffic engineer in the New York office; and Kevin Haff, a building systems engineer in the New York office.

“The victory for the team from New York was made even more impressive because none of the team had took part in an Enginuity Competition before, and this will give great encouragement to future teams in the same position,” Enginuity organizers observed at the end of the event. They were facing experienced competitors, including the “Jersey Geoengineers”, a perennial challenger who were also the runners-up in the 2019 competition and finished in third place in 2018.

The annual Enginuity competition provides management and leadership training that is relevant and appropriate for construction professionals worldwide. Each team is given the same computer-simulated challenge, and 18 weeks to establish and execute a business plan.

Actions taken from that point onward are up to the individual teams.

Teams were tasked with managing a UK-based global construction business that has only been in existence for one year and needs a new management team to run the company from 2020 onwards. The simulation operates in a global economy based upon real world economic, political and environmental events that can impact a business.

Each team devised a business strategy that involved understanding of the economic environment where the company operates, and the strengths and weaknesses of the business. Competing teams made strategic decisions based on financial management, overhead management, procurement and job progression.

The simulation includes periods that begin with the previous management team in 2019 before the new team took control, and then periods reflecting events and performance in 2020, 2021 and 2022. During the later years, beginning with the 13^th period, a dozen finalists compete head-to-head against one another for work, creating a more uncertain and pressurized environment where skill and team dynamics created in the earlier years can impact the outcome.

The journey was long and challenging for Building Suspense, especially in a year where a global pandemic required social distancing between teammates. All teams can now evaluate their performance and determine what they did right, and where they could make improvements that will have an impact on the real world.

Fortunately, the pandemic did not cause a hinderance to the team’s collaboration throughout the competition.

“Considering the distance and time zone difference between the team members the pandemic had much less impact than if our team were from within the same office,” Haff observed. “That said, the most difficult part was overcoming the learning curve, as the software is so in-depth.”

Although this was the first time the Building Suspense team had met one another, they were quickly able to come together as a team and become a formidable presence.

“At the beginning of the competition, we were all searching for ways to become more efficient project managers and better understand the difficult decisions upper leadership must make every day,” Haff said. “Scheduling time to talk over different time zones proved one of our biggest challenges, but the knowledge we gained and the heart-stopping suspense this well-designed software gave us made the struggle well worth it.”

The team’s strong collaboration benefitted from the guidance of their Enginuity mentor, WSP’s Joe Salvo, a two-time Enginuity champion. Additionally, Haff credited the flexibility and support WSP provided to the team was critical in allowing each member to explore the Enginuity challenge in-depth, making the victory possible.

Building Suspense shared some of the leadership lessons they learned from the competition – lessons that can be applied to other aspects of their work at WSP.

• When you don’t know something, don’t be afraid to ask for help. There’s always someone who knows more than you.
• Collaborate. Don’t micromanage.
• Always keep long term goals in mind. Don’t get blindsided by short-term goals.
• Keep an open mind and listen. Even small decisions add up.
• You won’t be able to win every project. Always have a backup plan and do your research to increase chances of winning.
• Remember that outstanding project managers could leave a project unexpectedly, and at any time. But good project managers can step up and become amazing, if given the proper opportunities and encouragement.

Building Suspense was one of 202 teams in the competition, and one of 10 WSP USA teams competing this year. Another 20 international WSP teams from the UK, New Zealand and the Middle East participated.

Building Suspense qualified for the final round by finishing 11^th overall after period 12. They were one of three WSP teams that earned a trip to the finals, joined by “Sac the Competition” from WSP USA and “Ministry of Wopus” from WSP NZ.

This marks the third time in the past four years that a WSP USA team has won the Enginuity competition. In 2018, the winning team, “Just Crazy Enough to Work”, included Salvo, Vincent Favale and Brendan Tyler. In 2017, “Never Tell Me the Odds” featured Salvo, Favale, Tyler and Matthew Beller.

The victory also continued the U.S. winning streak in the competition to four years. In addition to the three WSP USA victories, a team from Parsons was the 2019 winner.

Haff said that Enginuity rules will not permit Building Suspense to compete in the 2021 competition, due to their win. But they are not finished: Like Salvo, Haff and his teammates are ready to mentor WSP teams that accept the Enginuity challenge, sharing strategies that allowed them to outperform the competition and explore how actions during their early years developed management skills that, combined with effective team dynamics, led to victory.

“We now have an opportunity to pass along our Enginuity knowledge to the next generation of engineers and prepare WSP for its next Enginuity win,” Haff said.

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