20 February 2023 at 12:00PM
PMI Phoenix Gives Back During Future City Competition 2023 Regional Finals – Arizona
Each year, the Future City Competition provides middle school students the opportunity to showcase their vision of a “city of the future.” This year, students were challenged to utilize engineering and project management principles to incorporate climate change initiatives into their city’s design. The Arizona regional finals culminated on January 21, 2023, where PMI Phoenix Chapter members supported the Executive Committee with volunteers and judges connecting these up and coming project managers with real-world professionals. Congratulations to Team Bunjil from Mesa Homeschool Group for winning this year’s regional competition and representing Arizona at the national finals in Washington D.C.
The 2023 competition kicked off in August 2022 with a launch event for educators and parents, where PMI Phoenix members provided project management tips and moderated a panel of experts to introduce this year’s challenge topic. From there, students prepared their project deliverables, wrote essays to codify their city’s design elements, and began preparing scaled-models to be presented at the regional finals competition.
Throughout the year and the day of competition, PMI Phoenix oversaw the judging of the Project Plan deliverables. Dennis Kinton served as this year’s volunteer Director of Future City who led the judging coordination to determine the Best Project Plan and Best Project Manager awards. We would like to thank our volunteer judges for their support: Mark Plihcik, John Chico, and Edwina-Sampler Wright.
Members of PMI Phoenix also supported the Future City Executive Committee coordination efforts. Steve Poessnecker, Board Director of Academic Outreach, and Christopher Downey, Project Manager to Future City, volunteered to support various planning initiatives leading up to the regional finals event. PMI Phoenix would also like to thank our other day of competition support from Chapter volunteers: Marcia Solochek for model moving and registration support, and Delia Van Heukelem for registration support.
More articles about this year's Award recipients: