A team from Shanxi University (SXU) in Taiyuan, in North China’s Shanxi province, recently won second prize at a prestigious national-level competition, according to university officials.

SXU triumphed at the 13th National Structure Design Contest for College Students -- held at Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology in Xi’an, in northwestern Shaanxi province -- on Oct 16-20.

The theme of this year’s competition was "design and fabrication for model of power transmission tower in mountains" -- focusing on the development of the western region and the Belt and Road Initiative, and actively serving the needs of regional development.

After a competition involving 16 hours of design and fabrication of a model, the team from SXU’s Department of Civil Engineering was awarded second place -- beating out 111 teams from 110 universities and colleges.

The National Structure Design Contest for College Students is one of the nine national undergraduate’s academic competitions organized by the Ministry of Education, at the highest level of academic competition in civil engineering.

The purpose of the contest is to build up the engineering education practice platforms in colleges and universities.

Officials said it is also to further develop the innovative consciousness of students, team cooperation and the practical engineering abilities of college students, while effectively improving the quality of innovative talent training.