Engineering You're Hired is similar to the Global
Engineering Challenge, except that second year engineering students take part
in it while GEC is only for the first year students. It is an intensive week
where students from every engineering discipline get together to work on a
project which they have to choose beforehand. Our project title was 'Scavenging
Energy from Sewers', one which I chose since it is related to another project I
am currently involved in with Enactus Sheffield.
Our hub room, one large enclosure which lacks oxygen flow, but still one where many laughs were heard across the walls...
The first day, we engaged in some activities to get to know the other members in our hub. I recognised a few faces from the Mechanical Engineering department as well as some other people who I met during other extra-curricular activities, so I knew that I was on track for a pleasant week. I was glad to learn that in our group of 6 people, 3 of us were mechanical engineers and the other 3 were from either the Chemical Engineering or the Civil Engineering department. All of them were very friendly and quite enthusiastic for the project.
Brainstorming - the only limit is your imagination and creativity.
We started our project and had some crazy ideas at first but at the same time we were having a good time talking and getting to know each other. The first day was spent mostly talking about ourselves and our course, and deciding how we wanted this week to go and what we aimed at. After every day we had hub boardroom meetings to discuss about the progress of our project. Our board directors were quite strict and harsh with us the first day, but we were told it was for a good cause – not often do interviews go pleasantly.
Our storyboard - Summary of our project plan for the whole week.
Our hub director, going through the questions we answered in the afternoon and spotting what could be improved. And the much needed coffee for the 09:00 every day.
As the days went by, it got tiring to wake up early and stay
at the University until 17:00, but in the end I believe that it was worth it as
it was a new experience where you meet people from different backgrounds and
departments. Additionally, it helps build up your team working skills as well
as your communication and presentation skills.
Towards the end, on Thursday we had to submit our final
report of the whole project. It was a task which put some pressure on the other
members of the team but altogether using online software such as Google Docs,
we managed to work efficiently to finalise the report. On Friday, we had to
present our final solution to some industrial experts as if we were to sell our
idea in the real world. It was a different way of presenting a solution as this
time we needed to be even more convincing and be ready to fight-off every
drawbacks.
Snapshot of the presentation and the industrial mentors paying attention to the group presenting - they were harsh.
Even though some of us thought that this week would not be so
useful, we were quite pleased with the outcome in the end. In some way or the
other, we had learnt something which will be helpful to each one of us in the
future and, best of all, we broadened our network of friends. I asked a couple
of my team members about their experiences and they said:
“I was initially sceptical about the whole week, especially after
finishing exams a couple of days back, but I actually enjoyed it.” – Kyle
Farrell
“It offers people with a chance to improve their application
to placements and also improve their group working skills.” – Alexander Hesketh
“Awesome." – Lik Hang Hugo Tse
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