This article explains how the Judge Advisor facilitates award deliberations: preparing the session, running the discussion, verifying criteria, and submitting final decisions. It is written for Judge Advisors.
Definitions of the terms used here are maintained in the central glossary.
For how judges participate in deliberations, see Participating in Judging Deliberations.
The Judge Advisor serves in an advisory role and does not vote on awards. The Judge Advisor facilitates the discussion, keeps the room on track and on time, confirms that each selected team meets all criteria for its award, and submits the final decisions to the Event Partner. The judges decide; the Judge Advisor makes the deciding possible.
Before Deliberations Begin
Deliberations happen after all interviews and Engineering Notebook reviews are complete, so judges come to the discussion with full information and all award decisions are made in one session. Decisions made together can be reconciled together. The sorting that resolves overlapping candidates only works when every award is on the table at once.
Schedule by working backward from the Event Partner's award submission deadline: that deadline determines when deliberations must start. Scale the time to the number of awards offered — an event with three awards needs far less time than one with eight — and protect at least 30 minutes even at the smallest events, so deliberations are a real block of the day rather than something squeezed between other duties.
Have ready in the deliberation space:
- Printed award criteria sheets with post-it notes or paper and tape, and pens
- The master list of teams
- Tournament Manager reports, provided by the Event Partner, including final rankings and the Excellence Award eligibility report
- A way to document award decisions, like a printed list of the awards offered, with space to fill in each winning team's number and name
- Optional:
- A timer for keeping individual award discussions on budget
- Snacks — Deliberations come at the end of a long day, and a tired, hungry room does not deliberate well.
Judges bring their own rubrics and notes from the day.
Running the Session
Deliberations work through one award at a time. Keeping the room focused on a single award — its criteria, its candidates, its evidence — keeps the discussion comparable and fair.
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Start with the Excellence Award — it has the most criteria to verify, and because Excellence eligibility depends on final qualification data, starting early means the room's thinking is done and the decision can be confirmed once the last qualifying match concludes, rather than beginning the hardest deliberation at the most time-pressured moment of the day.
- Alternatively, open with a lower-stakes award as a warm-up, giving judges a chance to practice making a case and get comfortable talking with each other before the highest-precedence discussion.
- For each award, have every judge group submit its top candidate at the same time, before any discussion — post-it notes on the printed award criteria work well for this. Not every group will have a candidate for every award, and that is fine: a group may not have interviewed anyone who exemplified those particular criteria, but another group will have. Where groups converge, you have strong candidates; where they diverge, you have a conversation to structure. Because every group commits to a candidate before anyone advocates, no group's choice is shaped by whoever spoke first or loudest.
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Then groups make their case from evidence, anchored to the award's published criteria. It is normal — and a sign of good deliberation — for a group to withdraw its candidate when another group's evidence is stronger.
- The discussion practices judges follow are covered in Participating in Judging Deliberations; the Judge Advisor's job is to hold the room to them: keep voices even, keep points tied to criteria, and make sure every group is heard.
- Watch for conflicts of interest — a judge with a personal connection to a team, such as a child or student on its roster, should not have interviewed that team or reviewed its materials, and does not advocate for it in the room.
- An initial discussion does not have to end in a decision. If the room is deadlocked or consensus is not forming, narrow the award to two or three finalists, set it aside, and move on — the room returns to it after other awards are decided. Moving forward is a time-management strategy as much as a deliberation one: twenty minutes stuck on one award is time taken from every other award on the list.
- For any award whose criteria depend on data the room does not have yet (such as Excellence awaiting final qualification rankings), identify backup candidates during the original discussion, not after a problem appears. If the top pick does not clear the eligibility check, the decision is already made, and the room never starts from scratch.
Verifying and Reconciling
Every selected team must meet all criteria for its award. When verification happens depends on the room.
- When judges are discussing well on their own, verify criteria for the award just decided while the next discussion runs.
- When the room needs active facilitation to keep voices even and discussions on task, plan a short verification break after all awards are initially decided, before the final review.
Awards set aside earlier usually resolve themselves when the room returns to them: as other awards are decided, the one-award limit does the sorting — if one team receives this award, another receives that one. No team may receive more than one Judged Award, and each team receives the highest-precedence award for which it qualifies. A genuine tie that survives reconciliation is a signal the room needs more evidence, not more debate.
Raise any Code of Conduct or Student-Centered Policy concerns according to the applicable policies.
Finalizing Awards
Before submitting, review the complete slate with the full room — every award, every recipient, visible to everyone at once — and confirm agreement. The same post-its on the printed criteria you began with can work well here to make the whole slate visible. This review is the last moment to catch an error while the room is still assembled.
Submit the final decisions to the Event Partner.
After Deliberations
Collect all notes, rubrics, and ranking sheets from the judges. Confirm that any team or robot photos taken for judging purposes are deleted. Destroy all judging materials after the event. Deliberations, notes, and discussions are confidential. Award winners are announced at the ceremony, never beforehand, and the discussion behind the decisions is never shared.