Finalists have been announced for the 2025 West Virginia Bridge Design and Build contest.

Twenty-six high school teams and nine middle school teams will participate in the finals at the WVU Institute of Technology Campus in Beckley on Friday, March 28, 2025, and Saturday, March 29, 2025. The event – sponsored by the West Virginia Department of Transportation (WVDOT) for over 25 years – focuses on engineering by using real-world design principles in the software with which students design their bridges.

The Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) educational outreach program is part of the WVDOT’s ongoing commitment to education; the WVDOT also offers summer co-op programs, scholarships and tuition reimbursements as they work to recruit tomorrow’s engineers and other professionals. There were 116 teams, either an individual or team of two students, from schools all over the state submitting a total of 462 designs in this year’s contest.

To advance to the final round of the competition, students must use Engineering Encounters Bridge Designer 2025 software to design a bridge that a truck can cross successfully, cheaper than competitors’ spans. Teams at the top of the leaderboard designed bridges with the lowest cost.

The top 35 teams on the leaderboard are invited to participate in the final competition, where they will design bridges in a timed activity using the software and also compete to test the strength to weight ratio of balsa bridges.

To view the final leaderboard, visit: https://wvbridgedesignandbuildcontest.com/leaderboard/

The high school finalists include seven teams from Greenbrier East High School in Greenbrier County, five teams from Pikeview High School (Mercer County), three teams from Princeton Senior High School (Mercer County) and Morgantown High School (Monongalia County), two teams from Gilmer Country High School (Gilmer County), Oak Hill High School (Fayette County) and Putnam Career and Technical Center (Putnam County), and one team each from East Fairmont High School (Marion County) and Winfield High School (Putnam County).

The middle school finalists include three teams from Eastern Greenbrier Middle School in Greenbrier County, two teams from Suncrest Middle School (Monongalia County) and one team each from Park Middle School (Raleigh County), John Adams Middle School (Kanawha County), Andrew Jackson Middle School (Kanawha County) and Mountain Ridge Middle School in Berkeley County. The balsa wood building kits will be mailed out to the finalists within the next two weeks. Students will bring their completed balsa bridges to the competition.