Jury duty would be an enjoyable experience, instead of a major pain, if it were designed by engineers. I had a great time serving on a jury last week. Our role was not to determine guilt or innocence, nor whether to award civil damages, but to decide which of three student environmental engineering teams did the best job of analyzing a difficult wastewater treatment plant design problem and presenting their solution.

Victorious Notre Dame team, from left: Brenna Manion, Ryan OLarey, Chris Schlax and Chris Dube. (Photo Courtesy of Metcalf & Eddy)

In the finals, held in New York City May 4, four students from the University of Notre Dame defeated two teams from Iowa State University. The winners will split a $2,500 cash prize. Each student also received a personal copy of M&Es Wastewater Engineering Treatment and Reuse, the 1,800-page treatment plant engineers Bible. (Full disclosure note: the book now in its fourth edition, is a McGraw-Hill title and ENR is also another Mother McGraw property. When I was the magazines environmental editor I relied heavily on it to understand different sewage treatment schemes. Its not what youd call light reading -- I think it weighs more than seven pounds but I found it to be invaluable. The winners from South Bend apparently agree: They were offered the option of having their copies mailed home, but all decided to take the books home on the plane instead.)

James Anderson, a senior vice president and chief engineer in the New York office of engineering consultant Metcalf & Eddy, conceived of the competition in 2003. Anderson, one of the worlds acknowledged leaders in water and wastewater treatment plant engineering, died earlier this year from brain cancer. An engineer’s engineer, he worked on a number of complicated, high-profile treatment plant designs, including several New York City’s 14 facilities. On the revision to the treatment manual’s fourth edition, published in 2003, Anderson also coordinated M&E’s in-house technical oversight and review of the three authors’ updated manuscript.

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“I wish Jim were here today. This contest, which showcases you young people that are the future of our industry, is his baby," said Jekabs P. Vittands, president of M&E. He was talking to the contestants at a informal awards luncheon of sandwiches soft drinks and cookies on the 27th floor of M&E parent AECOMs 27th-floor office in midtown Manhattan.

Thomas M. Dickmann, M&E senior vice president, says the contest uses a variety of scenarios that give the undergraduates “the opportunity to work on real life environmental engineering design problems.” The goal is exposure to our business and eventually “to attract the best and brightest to this field.”

In a way, the contest is in M&Es best interests. A recent ENR cover story hightlighted the high cost of attracting and keeping talent these days. Flying in 12 students and their faculty advisors and putting them up in a hotel for a night may seem expensive, Dickmann says,“ its nothing really. Not when you consider what wed spend recruiting talented people.” The contest give the firm a chance to get a good look at a dozen of the best folks coming into the industry in a setting that reveals more than a typical job interview. Since the contest began, M&E has hired “three or four” of the top contestants, Dickmann says.

As M&Es national director of the design competition, Karik Chandran, a civil engineering professor at Columbia University, takes the lead in developing design problems and soliciting contestants. “We’re expanding every year,” he says. “Next year, we’ll have international contestants.”

This years contestants chose from eight problems. Each team prepared a final design report and a poster board explaining its proposed solution. One Iowa State team decided to develop a biological treatment process for cost effectively achieving low nitrogen effluent from domestic wastewater treatment anaerobic sludge digestion centrate/filtrate. The other tackled the challenge of developing a biosolids treatment/management strategy focused on maximizing solids destruction and recovering methane gas and COD production. Both teams researched a number of emerging treatment designs, including the SHARON (Single Reactor System for high Activity Ammonia Removal over Nitrite) system that M&E engineers are piloting in New York City.

Three of the judges work with similar problems every work day. Gary R. Johnson, a ENR Newsmaker is the Connecticut Dept. of Environmental Protection senior engineer in charge of that states efforts to remove nitrogen and phosphorus from Long Island Sound. Two M&E engineers, Bohdan Bodniewicz and Edward Locke, are deeply involved with Big League nitrogen removal efforts. Bodniewicz is product manager for several New York City advanced wastewater treatment projects and Locke is project manager for Washington, D.C.’s 385-million-gallon-per-day Blue Plains wastewater treatment plant. Both jurors were impressed with the students’ conclusions. “I think they ended up with the appropriate solution,” said Bodniewicz.

Notre Dames team chose a more theoretical problem: to adapt common treatment technologies that would be appropriate for highly developed commercial high-rise clusters in an industrialized locale such as a New York City. Thats the easy part. The treatment scheme must also function in the developing world, such as the slums of Mexico City. This problem, more than the others, required truly innovative thinking, said Chandran.

Jurors (from left) Locke, Wright and Johnson review presentation. (Photo courtesy of Metcalf & Eddy )

M&Es technical evaluation counted for 70% of scoring. Presentation counted for the other 30%. Each team had 15 minutes to state their problem, detail the approach and outline the proposed solution. Another 15 minutes were set aside for questions from jurors. Prior to their presentations, Dickmann and Locke explained to each team that its no longer enough for an engineer to be competent in design fundamentals; a major part of the job is communication and presentation, often in a public forum. Were trying to give you a flavor for what its like to pitch your idea to a client, Dickmann said.

Some teams passed out outlines. Others relied on All divided the load so that each team member took a turn delivering questions. One team member didnt jump in during the question period, a detail that the jurors were quick to notice. I asked Locke how realistic the scenario is. “It’s very much like this, a lot of the time,” he said. I told him that I felt underqualified as a juror, as a reporter and not an engineer. “Acutally that’s realistic, too,” he said. “A lot of times you might be presenting to a public board with members that aren’t engineers.”

The students were poised and quick on their feet. Each team kept within the allotted 15 minutes. The oral presentation scores were nearly identical. Notre Dames technical presentation carried the day. The winners Ryan OLarey, Chris Dube, Brenna Mannion and Chris Schlax whooped like Fighting Irish banshees when Vittands announced their victory at lunch.

Notre Dame Prof. Robert Nerenberg accepts trophy from Tom Dickmann, M&E senior vice president. (Photo Courtesy of Metcalf & Eddy)

The design competition was a fantastic experience for the students, and, needless to say, we're ecstatic about the outcome, said their faculty advisor Robert Nerenberg.

After the contest was done and a winner determined, the students mingled with each other, swapping stories and discussing job prospects, among other things. One will report to work for Black & Veatch, another to a smaller firm in Iowa and another plans to work for a nonprofit for a year before going to grad school, but many are graduating in a few weeks with no job prospects yet. Dickmann notes that it is very likely that M&E will snag one or two, but the rest are up for grabs. For information about how to get in touch with the environmental engineering stars of tomorrow, e-mail Tom Dickmann For information about next years competition, which is already in the planning stages, Karik Chandran.

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