Net-Zero Design and Construction-a-Thon 2026

From January 23 to 25, 49 Cal Poly students participated in the annual Net-Zero Design and Construction-a-Thon. They spent their weekend competing to design an updated HVAC system for a multi-use building including office space, data center, and warehouse. The student teams selected mechanical equipment, created budgets for labor and materials, scheduled construction and planned the crane pick to place the equipment. The multi-disciplinary teams were comprised of students from freshman to senior level, and from mechanical engineering, construction management, and other majors. The students were supported throughout by more than a dozen industry members acting as mentors and competition judges, and the fast past of the event ensured that all students contributed their skills towards completing the final design.

This annual event is sponsored by the Northern California Mechanical Contractors Association (NorCal MCA) and it has a profound impact on the student participants. You can read about the experiences of Mechanical Engineering student Andrew Chapin below.

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“It’s 3:57pm!! Go, go!! Where’s the Sequencing Sheet?!? Here!!”

Last weekend, I participated in my second Net Zero competition with the Cal Poly ASHRAE Club. When I competed as a first-year, I came in quite green and had no idea what to expect. What I found was spectacular, and I will be back and back again.

Roughly, the schedule works out to a mixer with participants, judges, and mentors on Friday evening over drinks and dinner; work all Saturday with your team; and present your solution on Sunday morning. The competition, designing an HVAC system and the submittals to bid it, is extremely complex, and time is a massive constraint. Load calcs, equipment selection, crane schedules, documentation, budgeting…that’s just the start of the deliverables, all due within 6-8 hours.

Collaboration is your only chance of success. Your team is almost always made up of both ME (mechanical engineer) and CM (construction management) students, who think quite differently. This is the part that I love. As an ME, I am fascinated by the way CM students think about project schedules, timeline constraints, and overtime considerations in a way that we MEs never even consider in Thermodynamics. Humphrey, our CM this year, whipped up schedules and project documentation like he had done it his whole life. The whole competition feels real: a real project at a real company with real stakes. I have made fantastic friendships out of both competitions and feel myself growing as a collaborator and a leader.

The amount of time and effort poured into this competition by industry and university staff is worthy of note as well. At least a dozen engineers and project managers with busy lives donate their weekend to building the next generation of HVAC personnel. A small army of professors keeps the whole project on the tracks, keeping everyone happy, focused, and learning. Every meal is catered (thank you, Prof. Mott), and the whole of your energy for the weekend is focused solely on the competition.

So, should you participate in it next year? Perhaps you’re interested in the HVAC industry (a rapidly growing industry projected to exceed $400B). Perhaps you’ve never even considered it. To all of these, the Net Zero competition is the perfect place to explore. As great as ASHRAE club meetings are, this competition is time-ticking, heart-pounding, mind-bending fun on a level outside of anything else I’ve done here on campus. It is a gateway to a career with friendly, helpful people who truly love their jobs and their industry and are making the world a greener, cooler place, one building at a time. The ASHRAE Club meets at 11:10am Thursdays in Engineering 13-124. See you soon!

P.S. A huge shoutout and thank you to my team this year. Lucas, Peyton, Oscar, Gavin, Humphrey, and of course our wonderful mentor Paige; I couldn’t have had more fun.