CIOBNB, a team from CIOB Student Center of Chongqing University, reached the final of Global Student Challenge (GSC) held by Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) in 2020 with globally highest scores after beating 50 participating teams from all over the world in 5 rounds of competition. As the only team from China among the top 6 teams, CIOBNB originally planned to go to Sydney, Australia and participate in CIOB 2020 Global Annual Meeting and the final of GSC between June 22 and 26. After outbreak of the pandemic, the event organizer decided to change the final from an offline one to an online one. CIOBNB is led by Professor Mao Chao from the School of Management Science and Real Estate of Chongqing University, and its members include Peng Zhengmin from Engineering Management Class 3 of 2017, Liu Runlin from the Real Estate Development and Management Class 2 of 2017, Zhang Xinyue from Engineering Management Class 4 of 2017 and Lin Chen from Engineering Cost Class 2 of 2018. This is the 5th straight year the School of Management Science and Real Estate has made to the final, and it is the first time the team has reached the final with globally highest scores. This shows the broad international view and solid professional knowledge foundation of students of the School.

GSC is an annual event sponsored by CIOB for students across the world majoring in construction management. In the event, participants are required to use Management Enterprise Risk Innovation and Teamwork (MERIT), a software platform developed by its partner, to simulate the full-process decision making of construction projects. Participating team members respectively act as the investment manager, budget manager, recruitment manager and project manager and take charge of the funds, estimation, bidding and personnel. They are asked to run a building company virtually using skills like calculation, comparison and prediction, and make decision-making adjustments in investment, assets operation, bidding, construction and personnel recruitment in the next round of decision making depending on the operation condition of the company in each stage. The operation outcome is eventually evaluated quantitatively. The other 5 teams that have reached the final of 2020 GSC are respectively from the George Brown College, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, University of Indonesia and Glasgow Caledonian University.

The preliminary of 2020 GSC includes two stages: the “foundation year” and the “early years”. Specifically, in the “foundation year”, all participating teams get an opportunity of “training”. Each team is asked to verify whether there decision has been made correctly in a limited number of “trainings”. They are expected to adjust and improve their development strategy through a number of attempts so as to lay a solid foundation for the next parts of the competition. In the “early years”, the real competition begins among participating teams. This part is subdivided into 6 periods from Period 5 to Period 10. Each period represents an operation season in reality. The strategies worked out by the teams in the “foundation year” are implemented, and adjusted as necessary based on the operation feedback on the “simulated construction company” on a quarterly basis. In the preliminary, performance of the teams is scored based on their Turnovers, Gross Profit, Operating Profit to Turnover, Company Value, Capital Employed, Contract Completion, Forward Workload, Forward Margin, Share Price and Client Satisfaction. Those indexes reflect whether the team has made correct decisions.

Team members apply the theoretical knowledge learn in class to the simulated practice when they participate in GSC. This experience enhances their understanding of the construction management and practical application, and improves their ability to keep up with the international advanced level and the industrial practice and broadens their horizon. In addition, their knowledge and thoughts of future construction management get deepened.

The pandemic has forced the final of 2020 GSC to shift to the remote mode. The online competition seems to be less exciting but the determination and confidence of team members are not compromised. The guiding teacher, Mao Chao, encouraged the team members: “It is difficult to stick onto one thing to the end especially in tough times like this.” Hopefully, we will see more CQU students appearing in international competitions on behalf of CQU in the future and let’s cheer for CIOBNB.