Concordia undergrads triumph at the 2015 Engineering and Commerce Case Competition
'A great opportunity': Concordia's interdisciplinary 2015 team consists of Keerthana Kodeeswaran, Alexandra Meikleham and Serena Feeney. The fourth member is Jordan Lennen.
MARCH 16 UPDATE: On March 15, the second annual Engineering and Commerce Case Competition was won by Concordia's team: Alexandra Meikleham, Keerthana Kodeeswaran, Serena Feeney and Jordan Lennen. McGill and the University of Alberta took home second and third place, respectively. This story previewed the 2015 event.
How do you prepare for the unknown? That’s the challenge faced by Concordia’s team in the second annual Engineering and Commerce Case Competition, which runs from March 10 to 15 this year.
In the course of the event, the team will have three business cases thrown their way by real-world companies, with no advance information, and they will have to come up with solutions in a matter of hours.
The team consists of two engineering students, Alexandra Meikleham and Keerthana Kodeeswaran, and business students Serena Feeney and Jordan Lennen — all of whom are undergraduates.
“This is a great opportunity to get a taste of working on real industry problems with a multidisciplinary team,” says Meikleham. “I’m very interested in the intersection of engineering and business, and find case studies to be very important. After I graduate, I want to do consulting and this is good preparation for that.”
Concordia’s team was selected on the basis of strong performances in the November 2014 try-outs. Meikleham worked on a case to evaluate costs and benefits of moving heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems to geothermal energy. The challenge was to make the case to potential customers that, while being more environmentally friendly geothermal would also produce savings.
The team, in place for a month now, has already had a chance to test its strength in a warm-up exercise. The students were challenged to explore options for the fabrication of heavy-duty industrial pumps used in the oil and gas industry – the twist being to reduce costs by switching from steel and alloys to composites, which are lighter and typically less expensive.
As Meikleham explains, teams must conduct analyses of all cases from both an engineering perspective and a business perspective. It’s not enough to prove that a problem can be solved technically. Business imperatives must also be followed. Is there a market for a new product? Are customers willing to switch to innovative practices with which they are not familiar? Can required resources for the new product or services be procured effectively?
“The competition is a great way to see how all your classes come together,” says Meikleham.
The Engineering and Commerce Case Competition (ECCC) is the only one of its kind in Canada. This year teams are coming to Montreal from universities across North America and beyond, including Egypt and Israel.
Concordia has a long history of organizing and hosting case competitions. ECCC is one of four annual competitions hosted by the university, including the John Molson Undergraduate Case Competition, the John Molson MBA International Case Competition and the Van Berkom – JMSB Small Cap Case Competition.