A1:

We have restructured the West Point Bridge Design Contest so that it can be offered every year, albeit with no national Semi-Final Round, national Final Round, or national prizes. We will continue to offer the West Point Bridge Designer software for free download from this website; the automated judging feature of the contest website will continue to be available; and we will continue to support local bridge design contests by providing Local Contest Codes and scoreboards. Local contests will be available all year long, rather than just during a specified two-month contest period.

Offering separate competition categories for different grades or ages might seem like a simple thing to do; but, in practice, it would tremendously complicate the web-based registration and judging system we use to run the contest. It would create many complex issues with verification of eligibility and composition of teams. And it would cost a lot. Thus offering age categories is simply not feasible, given the limited resources we have available to run this contest.

Yes, it's fair. There is no restriction on the number of teams that may compete from any given school. (That's one of the reasons why this contest provides such a valuable educational tool for teachers.) There is also no restriction on collaboration during the contest, so even if some of these teams got a lot of help from their friends, they have not broken any rules.

On our Publicity page, you will find a one-page flyer and a short article describing the West Point Bridge Design Contest. You may download these documents, make copies of them, and distribute them to others who might be interested in the contest.