Over the last few weeks, ITT has been participating as an Industry Reviewer for The Engineering for People Design Challenge, an annual multi-university competition for First- and Second-Year Engineering Undergraduate students.  The Challenge is delivered in partnership by Engineers Without Borders South Africa and Engineers Without Borders UK, working with a number of universities across both countries.

Each year Engineers Without Borders works with one of its partners to create a series of engineering briefs, based on real-world problems that people in their country are facing.  These briefs span engineering topics including water and sanitation, energy, the built environment, transport, waste management, information communications technology and local industry.  Students at participating universities are then asked to design a solution appropriate to the economic, environmental and social context.  To date, more than 50,000 students have participated in The Challenge, since its inception over a decade ago.

ITT’s role has been to review those challenge entries that have a transport-related focus. In relation to the entries we reviewed, our Managing Director, Andy McLoughlin, commented, “The range of proposals received were extremely varied and included innovative pavement designs for areas with high rainfall, development of hydrogen-powered public transport networks, and proposals for mitigating the accidental transfer of potentially invasive flora by vehicles travelling across long distances”.

Once all entries have been reviewed and scored, the best teams from each of the participating universities will be invited to a Grand Final, which will be held later in the year, in which they showcase their ideas to their peers, academics, industry representatives and a panel of expert judges, and compete to be crowned The Engineering for People Design Challenge Winners 2022.

In relation to the quality of entries ITT reviewed, Andy commented “the most effective solutions developed were those that attempted to resolve problems and challenges as close as possible to their cause or source, rather than those trying to mitigate their downstream impacts. I expect that whoever wins the competition this year will have been thinking in those terms”.

The UK Grand Finals of The Engineering for People Design Challenge will be held on 17^th June 2022.  We wish all entrants the best of luck!

You can follow Engineers with Borders UK on Twitter @ewbuk

#Engineering4People