OU’s Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge team will host teams from 11 schools this weekend to build a canoe that floats and is easiest to maneuver.

The team also will compete for the fastest bridge-building time for a bridge that bends the least with added pressure, said Jesse Berdis, team member.

OU’s team consists of about 20 engineering students divided to work on the canoe or bridge for the competition, which is organized by the College of Engineering, Berdis said.

Berdis, architectural engineering junior, said four judges from across the country, two of whom are OU alumni, will judge each boat on its aesthetics.

Then the boats will be evaluated in what is called a “dunk test,” which involves a canoe being placed in a box pool and filled with water to see if it floats, he said.

On Saturday, the canoes will be tested on the Oklahoma River in Oklahoma City in strength and endurance races. There are courses laid out on the river, Berdis said.

Three people will ride in the canoe for endurance and two for sprint. Berdis said the paddlers have to have a strong upper body strength, and they are generally selected based on participation and grades.

Stephen McCollam, mechanical engineering junior, is paddling for both the sprint and endurance races.

McCollam said the paddlers prepared by running and lifting weights at the gym last semester.

“Once it got warm out, we practiced paddling in a pond here in Norman,” McCollam said.

Cody Burch, civil engineering sophomore, is paddling in the sprint competition. Burch said they practiced working with last year’s canoe that was on display in Carson.

The boats will be on display on the lawn between Devon Energy Hall and the engineering practice facility this afternoon. The canoe team worked all night on Wednesday and Thursday to finish painting the craft. The team spent about 2,000 man hours on the canoe, said Shannon Jenkins, team captain.

“When you’re up until 6 in the morning working, you become like a family,” Berdis said. “People’s personalities really come out.”

This year marks the 100-year anniversary of OU’s engineering school, so the competition also will honor the centennial.

“Our concrete name is ‘100-year Storm,’” Berdis said. “The canoe is cream colored and says ‘OU Centennial’ in crimson.”

The title comes from a civil engineering term; storm means to design things for the worst storm, said Jason Kilpatrick, civil engineering sophomore.

In order to build the canoe, team members assembled it by forming the concrete around a mold with their hands, Berdis said. They added a mesh-wire grid into the concrete that aids in holding it together while floating on water.

“If you took a cross-section of the boat, it’d be concrete-grid-concrete,” Berdis said.

One of the guidelines set by the American Society of Civil Engineers states that each canoe must contain 50 percent recyclable material. Berdis said the team collected green bottles out of trash cans and crushed them into the cement mixture.

The other half of the team is preparing to build a steel bridge according to guidelines set by the American Institute of Steel Construction.

Mark Emde, civil engineering graduate student, is the team captain for the bridge team. Emde said the team builds the bridge in sections, and each has to fit in a specifically measured box. The team prepares the bridge to be a “snapping bridge,” one that snaps together in different places, but still must have the required nuts and bolts. Their goal is to put it together within five minutes.

“It takes a lot of welding and design beforehand,” Emde said.

The bridge team is evaluated based on its speed of construction, the weight of the bridge and “deflection,” which describes how much the bridge goes down with 2,500 pounds placed on it.

“It’s a real-life project but on the small scale,” Emde said.