#ICanEngineer Competition 2016
In early 2015 the ICE London Graduates and Students committee’s Pre 19 officers started developing the Future Engineers Scheme. An expanded team of four officers were elected at the AGM in October 2015, bringing lots of new ideas to expand the scheme. One of these ideas was to hold a schools competition for groups of secondary school children from across London to engage with engineering design.
The library in One Great George Street (OGGS) was renovated over the summer of 2016 to create an interactive learning hub, with the first exhibition focusing on bridges. The Pre19 team wanted to utilise this amazing resource by tying in the theme of the competition with the exhibition and with relevant projects happening across London. The theme was river crossings; this could include both bridges and tunnels, and was linked to relevant decisions being made on London river crossings, such as Silvertown Tunnel and Rotherhithe Bridge.
The Pre 19 team developed the brief of the competition and judging criteria, to encourage participants to consider the different areas that are important to design development, such as: cost, social impacts, location, structure etc. This was sent out to schools that had previously been involved with the Future Engineers Scheme and on a STEM Learning Blast, to reach out to as many schools as possible across London.
There were lots of entries received from across London, with a variety of designs, ranging from a Japanese Garden Bridge — a space for tranquilly in the city, to ‘The Peel’ bridge — providing green energy to London, with solar panels and wind turbines. It was good to see the amount of research that had gone into these designs, with high levels of detail shown.
The Pre 19 team worked closely with the ICE and sponsors to ensure that the competition shortlisted teams would have an awards day to enjoy and remember. It was possible to use the whole of the library for free, thanks to collaboration with the ICE, who also arranged the photographer for the day (see all the pictures in this article).
The awards day consisted of several activities. It began with an introductory presentation, where the teams were welcomed and then each stood up to introduce themselves and their design. The next activity was a bridge building exercise, this was using the LEGO available as part of the interactive exhibition. The teams were split up into four groups that were each commissioned to build a section of a bridge. Once the 40minutes of construction time was complete, the teams brought their sections together to create a single structure.
There was then a short break, and tour of the ICE building, including some of the history of the building and the institution. This led into lunch, where the teams were encouraged to talk to the volunteers about their careers and how they had decided to go into civil engineering. After this, there was a presentation given by someone who had volunteered with Engineers without Borders, exploring opportunities for engineers outside of the UK. Then a time for questions to the panel of volunteers from the day, allowing children and teachers to bring questions to the group of graduate engineers.
The day ended with the awarding of the prizes. The ICE President, Professor Tim Broyd, attended and gave a small speech to congratulate the participants on their hard work before awarding everyone with certificates and prizes. Thanks to the ICE and company sponsors, Arup and Highways England, every shortlisted finalist received something. The ICE provided certificates and freebies for the goodie bags, Arup provided copies of the Crossrail book: Platform for Design for everyone. The second and third place teams were awarded Amazon gift vouchers in addition to the goodie bags. Finally, the winning team from Wallington High School received all of these plus Arup’s most recent publication, “Total Design Over Time”, as well as a glass trophy which was provided by Highways England.
The Future Engineers Scheme will be launching the London wide 2017 competition later in the year, and are working to expand this further across the regions.
