ORONO – As winter was descending on the Maritimes, the timing for two University of Maine students and a recent graduate couldn’t have been better to introduce at an international business plan competition, a marketable proposal to improve the efficiency of home heating oil delivery in frigid climates.

Competing against 19 other teams from as far away as Eastern Europe and Asia, the UM team won the first place overall “private sector” grand prize and an award of $5,000 for its innovative business plan.

Team members were:

. William Sulinski, a senior from Dedham, majoring in economics.

. Brigham McNaughton, a UMaine junior from Springfield, Vt., majoring in business.

. Matthew Rodrigue, an engineering major from Wilton who graduated in 2004.

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Business Plan Competition was a two-day event held in early December at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Richard Grant, director of graduate programs and executive education for the Maine Business School, accompanied the UMaine team as coach and adviser.

Rodrigue and McNaughton presented the team’s detailed business plan for a hypothetical new company, Consumer Energy Research Corp., at the competition. The company and concept may become a reality, according to Rodrigue, who now works as an engineering consultant for Woodard & Curran engineers’ Dedham, Mass., office and is a member of the UMaine Board of Visitors.

Because of the likelihood that Rodrigue, McNaughton and Sulinski will seek patents for the company, they were unable to publicly discuss specifics of how they can improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of home heating oil delivery. However, they did impress a panel of judges.

“Mr. Rodrigue and Mr. McNaughton were polished in their presentation, they knew their plan well and fielded questions effortlessly and with confidence,” observed one judge, Barbara Touchie, a trade executive with Business New Brunswick in Fredericton.

“Both young men were ‘on their game’ the day of the competition and went the extra mile to pay attention to detail,” she said. “The business plan was well put together and during the presentation component, both Mr. Rodrigue and Mr. McNaughton removed any confusion surrounding the technology on which the product is based and made the concept easy to understand.”

With Sulinski’s concept, the team borrowed from the expertise of the university’s Target Technology Incubator and Advanced Manufacturing Center, which helps inventors develop prototypes to take to market. They refined the concept, cost analysis, predicted outcomes, marketing strategies and the estimated return on investment – in short, a plausible business plan.

“We knew we had a good idea going into it, but there were a lot of sharp folks up there,” Rodrigue said of the competition.

Other competing proposals included starting companies that used computers to evaluate symptoms to help doctors diagnose diseases, building and selling customized mailboxes to resemble a customer’s automobile or house, opening a restaurant and new ways to protect airline pilots and crew from unruly passengers.