Throughout each year, several competitions are held to compete in engineering challenges as a team. There are three levels of challenges. Learn more about each competition through the descriptions and links below.
Lakehead Engineering Competition (LEC)
LEC is the competition hosted by Lakehead ESS to determine the best teams in each category to send to OEC. Each team is tested to determine their talent and qualifications to continue on. The competition is continuously improving to ensure the best students are sent off to OEC.

Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC)
OEC is an annual gathering of Ontario engineering students who have won competitions at their respective universities and are invited to compete on the provincial level to share their talent and qualify for the CEC. The winning teams from university-wide competitions typically get sent to the OEC to represent their schools and the winners of those teams are sent to CEC. The competition has developed extensively since its founding in 1980 and now hosts 8 different competitions with a focus on innovation, design, and communications at a variety of levels for Senior and Junior Engineering Students.
Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC)
Each year, CEC brings together 150 of the most innovative and creative engineering undergraduate students from across the nation to compete against each other in design, consulting, presentation and debate. Each competition category at CEC challenges its participants to expand their frame of reference and to identify solutions to problems experienced by our profession.
National Engineering Month Design Competition
In March, the ESS hosts a month-long design competition that allows for challenges to adopt a greater depth of complexity than those of the Lakehead Engineering Competition. Established in 2023, competitors employ design principles and hands-on construction techniques and present a physical prototype to a panel of judges, many of them industry sponsors.