Congratulations to BCIT Engineering students for finishing at the top three and receiving several awards at the recent 2024 Western Engineering Competition (WEC) – an annual engineering competition that invites students from all disciplines to compete in 10 different categories, such as Design, Programming, and Consulting. This year, BCIT managed to snag two first place wins, as well as a third award for ranking third overall in the 2024 WEC.
BCIT students named winners in two categories
BCIT Electrical Engineering students Omar Kebedov, Garnett Goodacre, Kurt Querengesser, and Kieran MacCarron won first place in the Senior Design category. In this category, students are to design a technical solution to an advanced engineering problem and must present a functional solution under resource constraints.
For the Innovative Design category, BCIT Mechanical Engineering students Chris Vahi, Alan Palini, Tim TeWinkel, and Gordon Spring scored first place with their impressive work and presentation. Calling themselves Team Frobenius Enterprises, the students designed and developed a fabrication machine, otherwise known as the PCB Factory, that automates the manual circuit board fabrication process in order to aid makers, educators, and researchers in creating their own quality PCBs in under an hour.
These two teams will be moving on to the 40th annual Canadian Engineering Competition from March 1-3, 2024 in Calgary, Alberta, to compete nationally at the Schulich School of Engineering.
A competitive edge through applied learning
WEC is the largest undergraduate engineering competition in Western Canada, with over 250 competitors from 11 Western Canadian Universities attending the four-day annual competition held since 1985. To qualify for the WEC, competitors must first win their university’s engineering competition, representing the best engineering students from the 11 Western Engineering Student Societies’ Team (WESST) member schools.
As the only applied institute at the competition, the judges were impressed with BCIT students’ ability to apply their knowledge to real-world solutions, demonstrated by their innovative working prototypes. Additionally, BCIT students noted that the small class sizes at BCIT were an advantage compared to their competitors as they were more easily able to collaborate with one another and gain a sense of genuine comradery.
From this experience, the students were grateful for the opportunity to improve their communication and project management skills, while expanding their knowledge about design processes and how to implement it. Shoutout to the BCIT instructors who were advocates of their students’ projects and saw potential in what it could become.
Congratulations team BCIT!