After months of design, construction, fund-raising and practice, the ISU Bridge Team will be advancing to a national competition for the second year in a row.

“We hope to make a strong showing by placing in the top 10,” said Chris Bauer, co-chairman of the steel bridge team.

The ISU Bridge Team is an extension of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The society has two competition teams, the concrete canoe team and the steel bridge team. The steel bridge team will be advancing to national competition May 28 and 29 in Golden, Colo.

For the regional competition, the team constructed a one-10th scale steel bridge. The bridge is judged in the categories of stiffness, lightness, construction speed, aesthetics, efficiency and economy. The bridge is loaded over an imaginary river and required to hold 2,500 pounds.

Iowa State had the third-fastest construction time — just over four minutes after penalties.

Every time a rule is broken or a piece of the bridge falls, a penalty is added on to the total construction time.

Meredith R. Nelson, president of ISU American Society of Civil Engineers, said the regional competition was an exciting opportunity.

“The Midwest regional is one of the best competitions out there,” said Nelson, senior in civil engineering. “There’s a sense of camaraderie between the teams, and it’s interesting to see all the different bridge designs.”

Chris Bauer, senior in civil engineering, said he has taken a lot of time and dedication to make it this far.

He said the steel bridge team started planning for this year’s competition in the fall semester.

One of the challenges of this year’s team was youth, Bauer said.

“Half the team was made up of freshman students,” Bauer said. “At our meetings, we would teach the new members how to do everything in construction and also about the rules in the steel bridge competition.”

However, having so many new members will prove to be beneficial, he said, because it allows the team to have a large number of experienced members in the future.

At national competition, Bauer said he hopes to place in the top 10 out of 40 teams that will compete at the national competition.

“We want to do really well at national and get Iowa State’s name out to other universities,” he said “We want the other universities to look at us and realize that we have a strong engineering program as well as a dedicated and hard-working steel bridge team.”