Ontario Engineering Competition Advisory Board

The Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC) is an annual competition that is hosted annually by a different accredited Ontario engineering university. Originally called the Ontario Engineering Design Competition (OEDC), the Ontario Engineering Competition was the brainchild of Diane Neil and the Queens University Engineering Society in 1980.

The first competition encouraged students to compete in three categories (the Open Competition, the Industrial Competition, and the Communications Competition). With only eight members on the organizing committee, the competition attracted 56 students in 29 entries and set a high standard for the competitions to follow.

A group of Waterloo engineering students, impressed by the competition, was interested in continuing with OEDC and an annual event was born. Still only three categories, the Open Competition and the Industrial Competition were renamed to the now familiar Entrepreneurial Design and Corporate Design in 1981. Another major addition in 1981 was the introduction of Major Patrons for each of the competition's three categories.

In 1982, at the University of Toronto, the Communications Category split into Editorial Communications and Explanatory Communications bringing the number of categories to four and setting the core structure of the competition that would remain for nearly a decade. The organizing committee had risen to 14 members and the annual budget had grown to more than $26,000.

Over the next three years, the prestige and professionalism of the competition rose to the point where students all across Canada had become aware of OEDC. With OEDC as a blueprint, three other regional competitions and the national Canadian Engineering Design Competition (CEDC) were born, with the first CEDC held in 1985.

OEDC continued with four categories until the Sandford Fleming Foundation, who were disappointed with the attendance of their engineering debating competition, approached OEDC and suggested a merger. Held on a trial basis at first, the organizers of OEDC '91 at the University of Waterloo added a fifth category called Extemporaneous Communications. Since renamed to Parliamentary Debate, the debating category has become a mainstay, albeit sometimes controversial, part of the competition.

In 1992, while at the University of Ottawa, the competition changed its name to the Ontario Engineering Competition to reflect the fact that the competition, and engineering in general, is about much more than engineering design. In addition, in order to acknowledge the fact that Canada is a bilingual nation, Compétition d'Ingénierie de l'Ontario (CIO) was officially added to make the name OEC-CIO, which remains to this day.

The competition attained its present form in 1997 when the Organizing Committee at McMaster added the sixth and final category, Team Design, to the competition. To this point, the competition had two design and two communications categories that required considerable preparation and one impromptu communications category. The idea behind Team Design was that this new category could fill the void and create an impromptu design category. An added benefit was that Team Design would be limited only to junior students. This way, first year students could have an avenue to learn about the rest of the competition, while not at a disadvantage competing against the more experienced and educated senior students.

Back in 1985, the organizers at McMaster University realized that some structure was required to ensure continuity from event to event. To accomplish this goal, a working group of interested individuals was formed and named the OEC Advisory Board. While the responsibility for organizing and hosting the competition was to remain with the students, the Constitution of the OEC Advisory Board gave the Board a mandate as follows:

- to encourage continuity of the competition,
- to guide and assist the student organizers of the competition, on request,
- to support the organizers of the competition, and
- to prepare and update a procedure manual to aid future organizers of the competition.

Membership on the OEC Advisory Board consists of the following:
- one representative each from the previous competition, the current competition, and the succeeding competition,
- one appointee from each of the sustaining major patrons,
- the Dean of Engineering from the current, and succeeding competitions,
- the president of the Engineering Students Society Council of Ontario (ESSCO) and a representative from the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES),
- three student representatives appointed by ESSCO
- two others to be selected by the Board.

In addition, the OEC Advisory Board will appoint a Chairperson and a Secretary of the committee.

With a source of continuity in place, the competition has grown steadily each year in size and complexity. In 1999, twenty years after the inaugural OEDC, the Ontario Engineering Competition has expanded to 68 entries across six categories, with nearly 160 competitors. The OEC '99 organizing committee, which consisted of 23 members, worked with an annual budget of almost $125,000.

The first 20 years of the competition saw tremendous growth of this prestigious competition. In this new millennium, the Ontario Engineering Competition, and the OEC Advisory Board, is looking forward with excitement to the next twenty years and beyond.