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For a downloadable printer-friendly copy of this year’s rules, please click here.

For the Balsa Wood Rules, please click here.

Overview

The West Virginia Bridge Design & Build Contest (WVBDB) is a statewide contest intended to conduct outreach to middle school and high school students considering a career track in STEM occupations. The contest primarily covers bridge design, but individuals/teams invited to the Finals will also compete in a balsa-wood bridge building contest.

The Qualifying Round of the 2026 West Virginia Bridge Design & Build Contest will begin Friday, October 31, 2025, and end on Friday, February 27, 2026, at 11:59 PM EST. All individuals/teams must register at https://wvbdb.com/register/. This will ensure that the correct information is available to contact the finalists. All bridge design files must be uploaded to this website to officially enter the contest. All contest and event updates will also be provided on the website.

The top 25 (approximate) individuals/teams with the lowest cost designs will be invited to participate in the Finals (with at least five Middle School individuals/teams) that will be held at the WVU Institute of Technology Campus in Beckley, WV. Finalists will be notified by email on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, with invitation and details of the Finals event.

Oversight and Coordination

The WV Department of Transportation, Division of Highways is coordinating the 2026 West Virginia Bridge Design & Build Contest. The 2026 advisory board members are:

Name	Organization
Hussein Elkhansa	WV Department of Transportation
Margaret Smith	WV Department of Transportation
Troy R Morgan	WV Department of Transportation
Rachel Eades	WV Department of Education
Kase Poling	WVU Institute of Technology
Benjy Simpson et al.	Bridge Walk LLC
Lesley Rosier-Tabor	WV State Board of Registration for Professional Engineers

Board Members Table Edited: 02/05/2026

If you have any questions about the 2026 West Virginia Bridge Design & Build Contest, please contact dotwvbdb@wv.gov.

Rules & Eligibility

1. Students must be attending a public or private West Virginia school or must be home-schooled at a West Virginia address.
2. Students from grades 6-12 are eligible to participate.
3. Students may compete individually or in teams of two.
4. All eligible students will be placed into one of two contest categories—Middle School or High School—based solely on their grade level. Eligible students in grades 6-8 will be registered in the Middle School Division. Eligible students in grades 9-12 will be registered in the High School Division.
5. Teams composed of one high school student and one middle school student will be considered as a high school team for competition purposes. 
6. Students must register on the contest website (https://wvbdb.com/register/)
   • Email:  Students must use an email that is validated in the registration process. Students must have access to the email that is used to register for the competition. Any official communication from the WVBDB team will be made via email.
   • Registration Information: Teams wishing to change the email associated with their account or any other account information must contact dotwvbdb@wv.gov and allow two (2) business days for the changes to be made.
   • Teacher/Coach/Parent Information: Students must provide their teacher/coach’s name and contact email. Home school students must provide their parent/guardian’s name and contact email.
   • School Names: Students must choose their school’s name from the dropdown box provided. If the student’s school is not provided in the list, please choose “Other” and type the name in the box provided.
   • Team Names: Names should be between 4 and 20 characters long. Team names should be appropriate for a school assignment.  Teachers and parents/guardians can review team names and request that a team name be changed or eliminated. The Advisory Board will review these requests and approve or disapprove within two (2) business days. The Advisory Board reserves the discretionary right to change a team name, at any time.
   • Submission Requirements:
     1. Teams must have a valid team name associated with each design.
     2. File Naming Convention: The application will generate a default file name. However, the team is required to change the name before uploading to our website using the following naming convention: “TeamNameXXXX.bdc”, where “TeamName” is the team’s name and “XXXX” would equal an iteration number.
     3. The team’s name will be entered at the initial creation of the design on the “Fill in the Title Block” screen and cannot be changed for the life of the design file. It must match the team’s name entered at registration.
     4. Uploaded designs that do not meet these requirements will be disqualified.
   • Ties:
     1. Ties are unlikely but are not impossible. A tie is defined as: two or more separate submissions which have the exact same final cost.
     2. In the case of a tie, the tie breaker will be decided by the time of the submission of the designs. The design which was first received will receive the higher overall ranking on the leaderboard.
     3. Each subsequent tied submission will then receive the next highest ranking.
     4. Example: Three submissions are received on the same day all having a final overall cost of $743,210.55.
        Submission A was received at 9:43 AM, Submission B was received at 2:03 PM, and Submission C was received at 8:45 AM.
        The leaderboard ranking would be:
        1^st – Submission C (8:45 AM)
        2^nd – Submission A (9:43 AM)
        3^rd – Submission B (2:03 PM)
   • Ineligible Submissions:
     1. Submissions created by previous versions of the application will be disqualified.
     2. Design files that do not pass a load test will be disqualified.
7. To officially enter the contest, students must submit at least one bridge design file (https://wvbdb.com/login/) that passes the simulated load test.
8. Students must create their designs using the Bridge Designer 2026 software that can be downloaded from the contest website. 
9. Students are expected to perform their own work during the Qualifying Round and Finals.
10. The contest advisory board has discretion to disqualify students caught cheating or exhibiting behavior that is not representative of the contest values of teamwork and honesty.

Contest Schedule

The full schedule for the 2026 West Virginia Bridge Design & Build Contest is shown in the table below and will be updated on the website accordingly. Registration can be completed at https://wvbdb.com/register/.  The Qualifying Round will END on Friday, February 27, 2026, at 11:59 PM EST. The top 25 (approximate) individuals/teams with the lowest cost designs will be invited by email to participate in the Finals Event.

EVENT	DATES
Registration	October 31, 2025 – February 27, 2026
Qualifying Round	October 31, 2025 – February 27, 2026
Last Day to Request Classroom Assistance	February 13, 2026
Email Notification to Finalists	March 3, 2026
Deadline to RSVP to Finals Event	March 10, 2026
Finals Event Weekend	April 17-19, 2026
Finals (Software & Balsa Build)	April 18, 2026

QUALIFYING ROUND

Bridge Designer Software

The Bridge Designer 2026 software can be downloaded from https://wvbdb.com/software/. The information below provides an overview of the software.
Additional tutorials are provided on the website:

• Students will be presented with a requirement to design a bridge to carry a given load from a roadway across a river.
• Students may choose from a wide variety of site configurations for their bridge. Each will carry the load in a different way, and each will have a different site cost.
• Students will develop a design for their bridge by digitally creating and customizing various design aspects of it on the computer using the Bridge Designer 2026 software.
• Once the design is complete, the software will test the bridge to see if it is strong enough to carry the specified highway load. This test includes a full-color animation showing a truck crossing the student’s bridge design. If the design is strong enough, the truck will be able to cross the bridge successfully. If not, the structure will collapse.
• If the bridge design collapses, it can be strengthened by changing the types of steel and the sizes of the structural components that make up the bridge, or by changing the configuration of the bridge itself.
• Once the bridge can successfully carry the highway load without collapsing, the student can then refine the design with the objective of minimizing its cost while still ensuring it is strong enough to carry the specified loads.

Requesting Assistance

Assistance can be requested up to Friday, February 13, 2026. Teachers or Students may submit a request for an engineering professional to explain how to use the Bridge Designer 2026 software and teach some aspects of bridge design. The assistance will be provided by an undergraduate engineering student involved in an American Society of Civil Engineer (ASCE) student chapter (e.g., Bluefield State University, Fairmont State University, Marshall University, West Virginia University, or WVU Institute of Technology), a West Virginia Department of Transportation employee, or another professional engineer volunteer.

These requests will be handled by completing the “Contact Us” form here: https://wvbdb.com/contact.

Team Registration

Registration for the 2026 West Virginia Design & Build Contest must be completed on the contest website here: https://wvbdb.com/register/. Any changes to emails or other team members’ information provided during registration can be made up to two (2) business days prior to the end of the qualifying round by contacting dotwvbdb@wv.gov.

Bridge Designer File Submission

The 2026 West Virginia Bridge Design & Build Contest will utilize Bridge Designer 2026 software located here: https://wvbdb.com/software/. Bridge design files must be uploaded to the contest website to officially enter the contest.

Finalist Selection

The top 25 (approximate) individuals/teams with the lowest cost designs will be invited to participate in the Finals. The goal is to have 50 students participate in the Finals. To have a similar number of middle school and high school participants and because students can enter individually or as teams, it is not possible to set an official number of individuals/teams that will advance to the Finals. An estimate of 25 is given with the assumption that the 25 least expensive designs constitute team entries and are primarily composed of high school individuals/teams, with at least five middle school individuals/teams included in the competition.

Finalists will be notified by email on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, with an invitation. Finalists will have until Tuesday, March 10, 2026, to accept their invitation and RSVP to the event.

FINALS

The Finals Event weekend will be a combination of a Bridge Designer 2026 computer lab design and balsa-wood bridge building contest in-person at the WVU Institute of Technology Campus in Beckley, WV.  All information regarding event details, time, schedule, and location will be posted on the website.

The Finals event will be heavily photographed and recorded. By participating in the Finals of the Bridge Design and Build Contest, you acknowledge that you have been informed that you may be photographed, filmed, or otherwise recorded. Contact dotwvbdb@wv.gov with questions.

PRIZES

All students invited to the Finals Event and awards ceremony will be awarded a prize. Students can win more by placing 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd in both computer lab design and balsa-wood building categories. Finalists will win between $100.00 and up to $500.00 per team, depending on participation. All prizes are in the form of gift cards. The Top 3 prize winners of each category will also be required to fill out a W-9 tax form and return it to:

Attn: Dr. Kase Poling, Ph.D., ENV SP
WV University Institute of Technology
Department of Civil Engineering and Construction Management
410 Neville Street
Beckley, WV 25801

Awards will ONLY be given to those students who participate in the finals event and who are able to attend the awards ceremony following the competitions. Awards will NOT be given to students who do not attend the finals event and awards ceremony in person. Additional information regarding prizes will be provided during the Finals Event.