This year, the University of Windsor managed to pull off a hat-trick at the third Water Environment Association of Ontario (WEAO) student design competition. The team began with a disadvantage of having started late. However, this group of motivated students working under Dr. Rajesh Seth underwent four grueling months of intense preparation, planning and hard work, and tasted success in placing second in a province-wide design competition.

 The team comprised of five civil and environmental undergraduate students: Mohammed Amer, Amaka Ikeaka, Priyanka Joshi, Ruemu Ekpekurede, and Mahrshi Thakor. Following the University of Guelph in first place, the group from Windsor beat out teams from the University of Toronto, Ryerson University, Mcmaster University and Queens University.

The competition objective was to design a two-phase expansion of the Acton wastewater treatment plant in Halton Hills to meet the capacity demand by 2021 and 2031 by taking into consideration a variety of factors including flow rate and population. The project was meant to provide students with “real world experience” by working on an actual design problem and consulting with industrial and academic advisors and vendors.

Apart from submitting a 100-page report, the students were required to present their project to the judges for a good 20 minutes and immediately had to return to write an exam the following day.