Requirement
9. Build a full-size structure: a group, a site, a day, and a height limit
Required Often forgotten
A monkey bridge, a trestle or lock bridge, a climbing tower, a gateway tower, a Chippewa kitchen, or another design approved in advance. Working in a group or individually with your counselor's help, carefully planned, with all materials assembled and organised beforehand, and within the Guide to Safe Scouting height restrictions.
Notes and warnings
Warning. Check the Guide to Safe Scouting height standards BEFORE you choose a structure. The requirements insist on them twice, once as a standing note over the whole badge and again inside this requirement, and the height standard is what decides whether a design is buildable at all. Finding that out with the spars already on the ground is a wasted weekend. This site does not reproduce the standards: they are published, they change, and reading the current ones is the point.
Warning. This is a different order of thing from the eight requirements before it: a full-size structure, built by a group or individually with your counselor's help, carefully planned, with all materials assembled and organised in advance. It needs spars, a site, several people and a day. Plan the badge around it rather than reaching it ninth.
Where this step comes from
- Pioneering Merit Badge Requirements (Merit Badge Hub, last modified 2025-09-19), Requirement 9 · Names eight structures from the merit badge pamphlet and allows another approved in advance by the counselor, and requires careful planning, materials assembled and organised, reference to the Safe Pioneering points, and compliance with the height restrictions in the Guide to Safe Scouting.