HOULDER JUDGES ENGINEERING COMPETITION

Houlder Americas’ President, Garry Kennie (pictured), was senior judge of Rice University’s student engineering competition February 25. The Rice Global Engineering and Construction Forum, in partnership with the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Fluor Corporation, organize the competition to celebrate National Engineers’ Week each year. The Rice University Student Engineering Competition is open to all their students. In the contest, teams of students compete for cash prizes to solve a practical engineering problem using common construction materials Competitors are judged based upon criteria such as the length of time required to solve the problem, the amount of construction materials left unused, or how closely a team’s solution meets specified criteria. Student competitors do not learn about the nature of the problem until they report for the contest – making it a genuine race against the clock race. “It was an honor to be a part of Rice’s annual competition,” commented Garry Kennie, President of Houlder Americas, “Seeing the next generation of engineering students in action was invigorating. All the entrants showed remarkable skill and knowledge and can look forward to great engineering careers.” The first place winners were Freshmen Shannon Fei, Haihao Liu, Angela Zhang and Kevin Chang. To see the list of all the winners, judges and photos of the event visit www.forum.rice.edu. Houlder Americas launched in 2013 to fulfil a demand for specialist offshore design and engineering. Its parent company, UK based Houlder, entered the Oil & Gas sector in the 1970s as a drilling and subsea contractor – designing, owning and operating mobile drilling units, dive support vessels and semi-submersibles including the Uncle John, currently operating in the Gulf of Mexico. Today, the company provides wholly independent design & analysis, engineering & innovation and project management services varying from leading semisubmersible rig upgrades and vessel conversions to supplying new deck equipment and handling systems.