Sacramento State's Construction Management (CM) program keeps on rolling. Not only did it recently win a major healthcare construction competition; the program is now celebrating a national design-build championship.

On November 6 the school was awarded the 2013 National Design-Build Student Competition champions at the Design-Build Institute of America’s conference in Las Vegas. There were only three student teams out of 40 representing universities and colleges across the country that were invited to the Las Vegas competition.

The Sac State team won thanks to a 38-page written response to a request for qualifications (RFQ) and a request for proposal (RFP), as well as a 50-minute oral presentation for the design and construction of a five-story residence hall at the College of William and Mary. The presentation was given to a panel of construction experts from building, engineering and architecture.

The winning team beat out other students from Auburn University and Colorado State University in the finals. Members of the Sac State's team included Javier Mederos, Alyssa Zayas, Neil Devlin and Nick Staykow.

Mikael Anderson, Chair of the school's Construction Management department, says this year has been especially rewarding for the team. Besides this national championship, he says the program,  which has more than 40 award trophies adorning school walls, also recorded six wins at the Associated Schools of Construction competition earlier this year

The national DBIA title comes after the team was victorious at the 2013 Associated Schools of Construction’s inaugural Healthcare Preconstruction Competition in Chicago last month. In this contest, Sac State went up against seven universities and earned 95 of a possible 100 points. The nearest competitors were Purdue University (86.8 points) and Auburn University (86.4 points.

And in June, the program announced that for the second straight year, 100 percent of its graduating class in May had landed a job upon graduation.

Sac State’s student chapter of DBIA was founded in 2009 with a $25,000 grant from the Charles Pankow Foundation. The grant helped Karen Lee Hansen, a Construction Management professor, earn the Designated Design-Build Professional certification. She now serves as the chapter’s faculty advisor.

The university's four-year Construction Management program, which began in the early 1970s, is one of the oldest in state. Last year, it became a full-fledged academic department within the institution's College of Engineering and Computer Science, and it recently was reaccredited by the American Council for Construction Education.

Graduates of Sac State’s CM program go on to various careers in the construction industry, including engineers, project managers and executives, estimators and more. Of the 200 students currently enrolled in Construction Management, 10 percent are women.