University of Florida Wins the 2006 WEF Design Competition

Alexandria, Va. - The Water Environment Federation (WEF) announces the University of Florida (UF) as the first place winner of the 2006 WEF Design Competition. The event took place on October 23 during WEFTEC®.06 - WEF's 79th annual technical exhibition and conference - in Dallas, Texas. The team's project, "Orange County Utilities Northwest Reclamation Facility: Expansion Proposal" was selected from a pool of six WEF Student Chapter design teams from across North America.
 
Now in its fifth year, the competition is a program of the WEF Students & Young Professionals Committee led by vice chair Bob Wimmer, a senior associate with JMT and member of the Chesapeake Water Environment Association. Based off a student competition developed in 1999 by the Florida Water Environment Association, the competition is intended to promote “real world” design experience for students interested in pursuing an education and/or career in water/wastewater engineering and sciences. The competition tasks individuals or teams of students within a WEF student chapter to design and present an engineering solution meeting the requirements of the problem statement. Over the past eight years, the University of Florida design team has won first place in four of the eight competitions held at the Florida WEA’s annual conference each spring.

Sponsored by MWH, CDM, CH2M HILL and HDR, each team presented their projects to an audience of 60 and a panel of four judges comprised of one representative per sponsor. The winning team of Diane Bennett, Teri Liermann, Gautam Kini and Mauricio Arias, along with their faculty advisor, University of Florida Associate Professor John Sansalone, Ph.D., P.E., were presented with the winner’s plaque, certificates and an award recognition of $2,500 from WEF President Mohamed Dahab.

 
About WEF
Founded in 1928, the Water Environment Federation (WEF) is a not-for-profit technical and educational organization with members from varied disciplines who work toward the WEF vision of preservation and enhancement of the global water environment. The WEF network includes water quality professionals from 76 Member Associations in 30 countries.