On Jan. 15, BYU’s construction management team won the national title at the National Association of Home Builders’ (NAHB) annual student competition—again. For ten years the NAHB has sponsored the competition as a forum where schools can showcase their students’ skills. This year’s win marks the third time BYU has taken first place, and the ninth time BYU has placed in the top three.
But previous wins did not lessen the sweetness of victory, nor did they lessen the intensity with which students prepared. BYU’s construction management program has a reputation for excellence that puts its graduates in high demand. The 1999 team had a legacy to maintain.
After being selected for BYU’s team in August, Brian J. Benlap, Jelina McEntire, Russel F. Miskin, Brian L. Pike, Rhett Turner, and Todd V. Whetten—all upper-division students majoring in construction management—immediately started preparing for the competition. Teams must submit a written proposal detailing construction plans for an assigned project—this year’s project was a 180-lot subdivision to be built in Allen, Texas—and deliver an oral summary of the proposal to NAHB judges.
BYU’s construction management team had been meeting weekly at 7 a.m. since August, and they spent a good part of their Christmas break preparing their 200-page proposal. Brian C. Capt, the team’s faculty advisor and an instructor for the construction management program, says the team arrived at the competition well prepared.
NAHB judge Scott Wentz said, “After BYU gave their oral presentation it was apparent who was the front runner in the competition.”
The team received the NAHB contest trophy to display for a year, as well as a $1,000 cash prize. Team members also received job offers from industry visitors. “After the competition we had multiple people talking to us about working for them,” says Jelina McEntire, a senior from Woodland, Utah. “It gives you a lot of exposure because if you are willing to sacrifice that much time and put that much effort into it, then you are going to do the same thing for their company.”
Job offers abound for all BYU construction management graduates, with employers literally hounding the program for graduates to hire, says Jay P. Christofferson, who chairs the construction management program. “If companies aren’t here pretty much by the end of March, we don’t have anybody left,” he says.
On graduation day in April 1998, Christofferson could not find a single unhired graduating student for an interested company to interview.
BYU’s construction management graduates are in great demand because they come well trained in both construction basics and management principles, Christofferson says. “When students graduate they have something they can do—they can go wire a house, they can go lay concrete—but they also know how to manage a business.”
Students receive training in the technical aspects of construction so they can recognize quality work and communicate with the people they supervise, but most of their classes are concerned with project and business management. Course work includes classes in economics, engineering, business law, scheduling, estimating, and project management. The program is also developing a master’s degree that will focus on high-level management principles.
“The thing I like most about the major is it is more than just learning how to hammer nails,” says Rhett Turner, captain of BYU’s team and former president of the BYU Construction Management Club. A Provo resident who graduated in December, Turner recently started his own construction company, Aries Construction.
Community service is also an integral part of the program. During the 1998–99 school year, students built an 85-foot ship for the grand opening of the Provo Towne Centre, participated in highway cleanup in Spanish Fork Canyon, served on the local board of Habitat for Humanity, began planning a skateboard park in west Provo, and designed buildings for Camp Many Stars in Wyoming, a summer camp for children with Down syndrome.
And whether they’re sketching plans for a gigantic ship or explaining their NAHB proposal in minute detail, construction management majors are preparing to fill the industry’s need for qualified managers.
“It has been amazing to watch, over the last 10 years or so, how the industry has welcomed our construction management major. Now the need has become a dependency,” Capt says. “We’re getting quite a bit of national notoriety.”
