DDC and the SCA Kick off joint ACE Mentor Program and the 2020 CIRT National Design Competition

On January 7th, the NYC Department of Design and Construction (DDC) and NYC School Construction Authority (SCA) kicked off its joint ACE Mentor Team 8 program imagining a Gastronomic Center in a vacant lot located next to the Javits Center. The students are working with their mentors on the 2020 Construction Industry Round Table (CIRT) challenge. ACE TEAM 8 students represent high schools in Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Students were split into three groups based on their interests. Under Architect mentor Oral Selkridge, his group designed and sketched the structures and floor plan layouts. Civil Engineer mentor Madeline Skoblik worked with her team of students to research and write the rationale for the Gastronomic Center. Mechanical Engineer Ravi and Engineer Auditor Salman Javed guided their group in budgeting and scheduling exercise.

Between now and the end of the school year, the DDC/SCA ACE Mentor team will work to complete and strive to win the Construction Industry Round Table (CIRT) Challenge. CIRT winners will travel to Washington D.C. Team 8 hopes to present their Gastronomic Center as a future project envisioned for New York City. The Center would serve as a cultural and culinary tourist destination that will represent and celebrate the diversity of the city and its food. The students have come up with innovative ideas while designing interactive boards to introduce the special menu of the day for each restaurant.

The Team hopes to present its project at the CIRT’s National Design Competition. Team members will be required to explain their intentions for the structure they envision building, the reasoning behind it and how they would construct it, including details on a proposed redesign, the construction materials and building techniques they would use as well as the estimated cost. Students would also take into consideration applicable sustainability features.

Founded in 1994 by a group of leading architects, contractors and engineers in New York City, the ACE Mentor Program has served over 65,000 students nationwide and over 10,000 students in New York alone. Today more than 9,000 students and 3,600 mentors participate in ACE each year in 37 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Three-quarters of ACE students come from minority and underserved communities.