Tips and Strategy

Some individuals, schools and companies have posted tips, strategies, references, and resources that may help newcomers get going and veterans improve their efforts. This partition highlights a few of these.

Team building is an important part of preparing a team for a concrete canoe competition.  Even if you have mostly veterans, you may want to begin by exposing your crew to a clever piece of prose which takes certain migration characteristics of geese into consideration and applies the concepts to human behavior and teamwork. It was written in 1972 by Dr Robert McNeish of Baltimore, Maryland.  He was a science teacher for many years before he became involved in school administration and, after studying flocks of geese for many years, first wrote the piece for a sermon he delivered at church. 

"Lessons from the Geese" 

Project management is critical to a team's success and the election of officers and team leaders that will take the group to victory is essential. At UAH, we have some of our key stakeholders, including last year’s officers, our faculty advisors, and alumni, outline key roles and goals for the Chapter. Before officer elections are held, each candidate is asked to make a presentation highlighting their plans for supporting the Chapter including recruiting and training new members.

Project organization is important so that each team member, no matter how new, understands what needs to be done. Due to the small size of our group, we  rely on a systems approach to look at the project holistically to see where the overlaps and interactions lay and rely on a project schedule to map out critical tasks which have no float.  These tasks must be accomplished in order to move forward with the project and their termination is typically marked by a milestone, such as hull design, structural analysis, mix design, and canoe construction.

Human dynamics must be understood, since the inability to cope with this aspect of the competition is a major impediment to success. We rely a team building strategy developed by Power2Transform, an organization that specializes in training and development through the use of personality tests. The contact there is John Bentley.  Other teams schedule adventures and outings to help build thrie social and communication skills.  Team Adventure Activities, for example, is an organization that  specializes in taking people on outdoor pursuits. The contact there is Rob Finley.

Academic knowledge is important and there are many ways that a team can build strength in this regard.  You may want to ask one of your instructors, for example, to offer a class pertaining to the competition, such as:

John A. Gilbert - "Strategically Tuned Absolutely Resilient Structures" - independent study class dealing with the design and analysis of cementitious composites taught on an advanced undergraduate level.

Supplementary information can be found on the web, ranging from good pointers for beginners to resources designed for competition veterans and sites designed to address the most difficult of questions. See, for example,

Team UAH - "Just Getting Started" - tips for competing at the NCCC including suggestions for design parameters such as length, weight, concrete strength, and concrete stiffness.

University of Wisconsin Madison - "NCCC Design Papers 2000-Present" - a library of the top design papers in the U.S. National Concrete Canoe Competition; see the link on our main menu entitled, "Design Papers."

The Concrete Forum - "www.concrete.com" - an excellent source for technical and product information where questions may be addressed to "Dr. Concrete."

Competition awareness may help you improve your delivery and sites like ours can help in that regard. See, for example:

Team UAH - "For the Record" - statistics for the U.S. National Concrete Canoe Competitions including commentary, spreadsheets, and competition coverage; see the link on our main menu entitled, "NCCC Statistics."

Team UAH - "Concrete Canoe Websites" - links to concrete canoe web sites including those of the U.S. NCCC qualifiers and host schools; see the link on our main menu entitiled, "Concrete Canoe Websites."

---