This year, for the fourth time, students from the Faculty of Engineering, University of Indonesia (FTUI) won the title of the international construction competition, The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) Global Student Challenge 2022. The FTUI Nawasena Team won the Runner Up under the guidance of the Professor of the Department of Civil Engineering, FTUI, Prof. Mohammed Ali Berawi, M.Eng.Sc., Ph.D. This team consists of four students from the Civil Engineering Department, FTUI class 2018, namely Sylvia Larasati Putri, Muhamad Hafiz Setiawan, Muhammad Reza Imansyah, and Cakraningrat Kencana Murti.
“This competition is basically role playing. Each team plays a role in managing the construction company for a certain period. In the virtual company of the Nawasena FTUI team, the management of this company is led by four managers, namely the Financial Manager (Sylvia Larasati Putri), Overheads Manager (Muhammad Hafiz Setiawan), Estimating Manager (Cakraningrat Kencana Murti), and Construction Manager (Muhammad Reza Imansyah),” said Sylvia who was the team leader.
During the competition period, each team is provided with data and charts to help the team analyze the company’s performance, including client information, contract value, company finances, stock price, investment, turnover, profit, value, overhead, staff & agency, capacity and training costs.
“There are six weekly rounds in the early stages of the competition. Teams are assessed weekly based on Key Performance Indicators, including Gross Profit to Turnover ratio, Operating Profit to Turnover Ratio, Company Value, Share Price and Client Satisfaction. From the results of the assessment, the committee then chose the top six teams as finalists, including the Nawasena FTUI team,” said Hafiz.
“There are three rounds of competition, preliminary, early years, and final years. The Overhead Manager performs forecasting to see the state of the market in the current phase, chooses the type of project to be taken and performs calculations for the company’s management staff. The Estimating Manager is tasked with making decisions regarding which projects are suitable to improve the company’s performance, ensuring that the company can “secure” the project by determining a competitive bid price based on accurate estimation results compared to other participants,” said Cakraningkrat.
Prof. Mohammed Ali Berawi, M.Eng.Sc., Ph.D who since 2019 has guided the FTUI student team stated, “This competition is a means of proving students’ abilities to produce various strategies and tactical steps that are appropriate to the development of development dynamics by considering technical aspects, investment and business and project sustainability.”
Due to the pandemic situation, this prestigious international competition was again held online on 19–25 June 2022 by The Chartered Institute of Building (UK), the world’s largest construction management professional organization, and was attended by 35 teams from all over the world. The competition uses MERIT, an online game that simulates the management of a construction company. Each team consists of four people, each of whom plays an important role in managing the virtual construction company of each team.
The Construction Manager is in charge of controlling the process of implementing the construction of buildings that have been won through auctions. There are two things that are controlled, namely Project Manager (PM) and Labor. In controlling, several aspects are considered including project difficulty, risk level, PM background, and company’s financial stability.
The Financial Manager (FM) is in charge of managing the company’s finances so that operational cost needs and stakeholder expectations can be met, predicting operational costs and profits (in collaboration with other managers), determining the amount of dividends and investments. There are two main focuses for FM, namely increasing Company Value and Share Price.
“Based on the design we made, the Nawasena FTUI team won a final score of 2541. This final score is only 3 points different from the team that won the First Place. In addition, from the final graph, it can be seen that our company’s growth is more sustainable compared to other teams in terms of share price,” said Reza.
“By winning this competition, the ability and competence of students at FTUI are considered capable of competing in the international world. It is hoped that in the future students can continue to improve their ability to compete in the international world as a form of embodiment of Indonesia as a superior and advanced country and have a real impact on society,” said the Dean of FTUI, Prof. Dr. Heri Hermansyah, ST., M.Eng., IPU regarding student achievements.
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Public Communication Bureau
Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia