The Seville team wins the National Olympiad of Roads, Channels and Ports held at the ETSI for the second consecutive year

The Higher Technical School of Engineering of the University of Seville has been in charge of organizing the VII National Engineering Olympiadof roads, channels and ports , an activity aimed at students of Compulsory Secondary Education and that seeks to promote the profession and the university environment between students who are close to the choice of the degree they are going to study in their next academic stage. 

After the completion of the different tests, the scores offered as a result that the team that represented the University of Seville, formed by students of the Punta del Verde Institute, obtained the first position for the second consecutive year, followed by the one from Burgos and Cartagena. Therefore, and because the regulations of the Olympics establish that the organizing venues cannot repeat, the person in charge of organizing the next 2026 edition will be the University of Granada, which obtained the fourth position, since the first three have recently welcomed this event. 

More than 80 young people from Secondary Education Centers have participated in one of the 14 teams that have faced the tests of the competition, the origin of the venues being cities that have higher studies of Camino engineering, channels and ports (Seville, Granada, Cartagena, Alicante, Valencia, Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Burgos, Santander, Oviedo, Cádiz, A Coruña, Cáceres and Ciudad Real). 

The realization of this Olympiad is in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which constitute a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and perspectives of people around the world. These six tests that constitute the Olympiad are related to 8 of the 17 ODS defined on the 2030 Agenda on sustainable development by the UN approved in 2015.

In this way, the students had to overcome the following challenges:  

• Test 1 “Arch of voussoirs”: Construction engineering (SDG 8, 9, 11 and 17). 

• Test 2 “Da Vinci Bridge”: Structural engineering (SDG 8, 9,11 and 17). 

• Test 3 “Dam-Dyke”: Hydraulic engineering (SDG 6, 8, 11 and 17). 

• Test 4 “Road engineering and its works”: Graphic engineering (SDG 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 17). 

• Test 5 "Logistic": Transportation of goods, efficient logistics (SDG 8, 11,13 and 17). 

• Test 6 “Playing at being an engineer”: Computer-assisted project (SDG 4, 8 and 17). 

• Test 7: "Surprise" sponsored per meter of Seville. 

 Among the objectives of the Olympiad is to test the rapid response capacity and structural intuition of different groups of high school students working as a team. The tests have different degrees of difficulty, but they allow us to know the leadership roles of the participants, their attitude towards a problem, the ability to work as a team, adaptation to limited means and work tools, etc.  

In addition to promoting the profession of Civil, Canal and Port Engineering among young people, STEM degrees and facilitating a first approach between high school students and the university academic world, the linking of these tests with the SDGs established in the Agenda 2030 by the UN, involves students to work for a common good and integrate these objectives into their present as aspiring to be the new professionals of the society of the future. 

The celebration of this National Olympiad has been supported by the Official College of Camino Engineers, Channels and Ports (COICCP) and Metro de Sevilla.