Engineering You’re Hired! the EYH week by Haiqi Huang

Engineering You’re Hired!-the EYH week by Haiqi Huang

What is EYH?

EYH is the abbreviation of Engineering You’re hired week where students work together with a  group of students from other engineering departments. Together in teams they have to design a project and finally present it to professional industrial directors at the end of week. During the week, we would have to reach “milestones” each day and the research results would be presented to a supervisor in each hub.

Here is a great film showing some of the highlights and students’ opinions about EYH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ggOOGDFaGs&feature=youtu.be

Why do we have EYH?

1)Researching real industrial data.

 The final aim of the EYH week is to design a project that could work in the real world. It was crucial that the data collection and analysis was accurate. By investigating large amounts data in terms of costs and profits for various products, we could provide a much more convincing solution to our project.

2)Excellent teamwork experience

Each person in every group would have the opportunity to become a group leader at least once during the EYH week. This could be an important chance to enhance leadership skills. The major task for the group leader is to set a daily goal, which gives the team an objective to work towards each day.

A huge part of EYH is to learn to cooperate with people from various departments. It is important to get the right balance between defending your individual opinion and listening to other ideas looking at things from a different perspective. In this case, EYH week was an excellent opportunity to master team-working.

3)Enhance your CV

EYH is definitely a valuable learning experience and could make a big difference in career prospects. When we attend university lectures, we learn the theories and different concepts but in EYH we have the chance to try to use what we have learnt, to solve real-world problems.

-What options are there in EYH?

There is a choice of engineering design projects available to choose from which are updated yearly. They cover a wide range of topics such as environmental issues, transport and civil construction design, energy supplies, programming and device design etc. You can note down your preferences and the organisers try to match them.

-An Example:  Nuclear Desalination Plant Design

This is the project I picked up for my EYH week where the objective is to design a desalination plant for an isolated island in the Pacific Ocean, based on nuclear energy. I was working from students from mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering and general engineering. It was awesome to be inspired by people from other research fields with different approaches to thinking. I particularly enjoyed the exchange of ideas, the discussion afterwards and the process of agreeing upon a final decision.

This diagram below shows one of our decision making processes about the nuclear reactor and desalination plant:

                                                                                            

After a 5-days project design, we finally agreed upon a workable project plan which not only included a working concept but also revenue analysis and a payback period.

There was a chance to win a “pitch for funding” certificate for one group in a hub if your team put forward a good design throughout the week. This also meant your design is applicable!!! This would be an excellent addition to your CV. The Picture below is my group and the director from the industry, winning the best ‘pitch for funding’.

                                                                                            

EYH week, took place at the beginning of a new semester, and it was really motivating and inspiring students and a great help in navigating your future career.

To know more information and EYH projects, link below would help a lot:

http://www.yourehired.group.shef.ac.uk/wp/?page_id=18