A team of Lehigh University civil engineering students won the Best Video Award in the 2026 Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) Big Beam Competition.
The team included Jackie Sobota ’26, Walter Fried ’26, and Samantha McEvoy ’26, now graduates of the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. The students were advised by Clay Naito, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and worked with PCI producer member Northeast Prestressed Products.
In the annual competition, teams of college students design, build, and test a 20-foot precast, prestressed concrete beam. Entries are evaluated on the beam’s load-resisting performance, as well as the quality of the team’s analysis and report and a video overview of the project.
The national competition gives students hands-on experience applying structural engineering concepts to the design, fabrication, and testing of precast, prestressed concrete.
Since graduating, Sobota has joined AECOM, while Fried is pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University and working at HNTB. McEvoy is enrolled in Lehigh’s M.Eng. in Structural Engineering program while working at Providence Engineering.
Lehigh earned the Best Video Award, while North Carolina State University was named the overall winner and Northern Arizona University received the Keith Kaufman Award for Best Report.
Watch Lehigh’s award-winning video: 2026 PCI Big Beam Competition.