Georgia Tech was awarded second place in the Sustainable Solutions Competition at the 2026 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Civil Engineering Student Championships. In addition to the second-place finish, the team’s project was singled out as a “fan favorite,” and recognized by conference attendees as the “Best Design with Community in Mind.”

The Sustainable Solutions Competition, held June 25-27 at Fairmont State University in Fairmont, West Virginia, was part of ASCE’s national conference. 

Georgia Tech’s student chapter of ASCE (GT-ASCE) advanced to the national competition after receiving a perfect “100” score and winning the regional competition in March at Florida Atlantic University. It was the fourth year in a row the regional competition had been won by a GT-ASCE team.

The Sustainable Solutions Competition challenges students to develop a stronger understanding of sustainability and learn to incorporate sustainable solutions into everyday problems that engineers incur.

In this year’s challenge, the teams were tasked with creating a water-cooling system and required to use the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure’s Envision framework to achieve sustainability goals. GT-ASCE’s project, “The Orchard,” converted an agricultural site into an advanced technological campus with four data center buildings and efficient mechanical systems.

According to team captain Sowmithra Muthulakshmi Prakash, GT-ASCE spent over 675 engineering hours over twice weekly meetings and additional meetings with professionals on the project. Prakash praised the group for showing up when needed and noted that many of the members were new to the team this year. 

“We can now confidently say we know a lot about data centers and their cooling systems,” she said.