Global Engineering Challenge by Zifa Zuhair

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Global Engineering Challenge(GEC) is a week-long program for all the undergraduate engineering students to work together in groups alongside students from different courses. As a first-year chemical engineering student, my lecturers and personal tutor told me about GEC at the beginning of the semester. At the time I couldn’t understand the purpose and importance of it but this became apparent when I actually completed the week.  Based on the feedback from students that had already done it, I decided to invest all my energies into the week.

I selected “Smart Greenhouse” as my priority topic and fortunately it is the one that I was assigned to. topic I wanted. My group had to come up with a feasible concept for a smart greenhouse in Kibera, an unrecognised territory in Kenya, that is facing overpopulation and consequently a shortage of food, as well as numerous other issues. On the face of it, our task seemed almost impossible, after all, it was just after semester one and none of us had much practical engineering experience. Once we thoroughly read the daily task list and the overall objectives, we realised that it was achievable and something we could  excel in, if every team member put enough effort in.

On the first day, we decided to select a daily leader to make ensure each one of us got to test out the reigns and this seemed to run fairly smoothly. However, as the week progressed, it became apparent why the word “Challenge” is in the title. Our group was made up of individuals with very different  personalities, and work ethic. There was a realisation that that this was the kind of environment we would all have to work in the real world of engineering. You do not get a say who your teammates are going to be and any big design ideas had to be shared and approved by each member. All of us had to develop and grow in areas where we may have previously held back before. This was evident when it came to communicate our individual ideas. Having to explain it in detail to the rest of the team proved to be surprisingly harder than it sounds. Giving professional and constructive feedback was almost as crucial as presenting the ideas. You would exercises like this are obvious in theory, but you can only understand this once you have had practical experience in an atmosphere such as GEC.

In order to come up with a smart greenhouse design, we had to consider the factors that we would have otherwise never thought of. After all, just building a greenhouse with smart technology was no good if it did not cater to the needs of the society that it is meant to feed. We had to consider geographical, social, economic and ethical needs and limitations of Kibera. Being an unrecognized territory, meant the statistics about Kiberia, were not readily available. In addition to this,  the validity of the available statistics were even more questionable. Despite many obstacles, we managed to put together our group report and present our final design idea to the judges.

Finally, after a few hours of presenting our solution, came the gratifying moment when our Team won “Best Communicated Solution” in our hub. Knowing all our hard-work and efforts had paid off and seeing the reward for it (glorious chocolate!) it was worth every single 9 to 5 day we had to invest. 

However, beyond that, the skills we learnt during GEC were invaluable and it helped us to get into the mindset of being an “engineer” which is something every first-year student looks forward to. I truly believe GEC is a great opportunity for us to take our first steps as future engineers. Now for the dramatic end to this article, here it is. My team’s smart greenhouse in all its glory!

Disclaimer: the 3D concept model isn’t a specification of our GEC task, but a certain member of our team was quite talented in computer modelling so this was just for extra visual panache.

MY GEC EXPERIENCE 2017 - by Muhhamad Zainudin

It’s been two weeks since the first day of Global Engineering Challenge (GEC) week but I can still vividly remember every single detail of it. After a month of not having to care what time to wake up, I had to be ready by 9 in the morning. I was not exactly sure what to expect from GEC but there was one thing I was hoping for, great teammates. As I was walking through the misty cold morning, I encountered a friend of mine and we walked to the St George’s Church Lecture theatre endlessly talking about our Christmas Holiday experiences. As we arrived, people had already started to find seats and fortunately we managed to grab empty ones. There were a lot of new faces I hadn’t met before because people from different courses across the Engineering faculty were grouped together in this lecture theatre.

Prof Harm Askes started the morning with an energetic introduction and invited a guest speaker from Jaguar Land Rover as an industrial speaker. He was very experienced and wise, telling us about what to expect in the industry. After that, came a speech from Engineers Without Borders (EWB) from an enthusiastic speaker named Dan Craddock. He shared with us some of the projects that EWB has engaged in and it really broadened my horizons about how people are in dire need of help all around the world. Then, we are introduced to Bambui, Cameroon, the small village that everyone was going to work on, finding the best solutions for 26 different problems. My group was tasked with designing an electrical supply infrastructure based on renewable energy sources. The one hour GEC introduction ended with us being briefed about our logistics such as the hub we were in, where it was located and the time management. So, I went to my designated hub which is CIV Workroom 2 on the E floor of the Mappin Building. It was quite challenging to find the room. As the students of The University of Sheffield would know, the Mappin Building could be quite tricky.

I sat down and was introduced to my group mates, Matthew Morrel, Matthew Harding, Matthew Owen, Christopher Liu and Brian Githiga. They were very welcoming and we became friends in a split-second. Morrel and Owen were from Chemical Engineering, Brian was from Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, Christopher and Harding were from Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science respectively. Our facilitator was a very nice man, his name was Matthew Dwyer, another Matthew.

We had team building exercises to know more about our team mates before proceeding with the project. It was a bit awkward to work as a team because we were asked to build a 75 cm tall tower with straws and newspapers and everyone was giving ideas. Out of 8 groups in the hub, none won the challenge. Our facilitator said not to worry about that as we would see the beautiful result at the end of the week and I was looking forward to what he meant.

The days went on with us exchanging ideas and giving our equal contribution to get the project done. We started with Understanding the Problems in Bambui which really helped us get moving. We discovered a whole new world. If we thought 5,000 kWh of electrical consumption and annual income 41,000 USD per capita was normal, then imagine Bambui with a contrast of 200 kWh and 500 USD. We also got familiarized with the proper steps in creating a perfect solution. After we knew the problems, constraints and the stakeholders of the project we moved on to the Design Questions. Asking ourselves what will our design achieve, listing down all the data we have researched and using ballpark estimation for important data we couldn’t find from any sources.

On the next day, we focused on the Design Criteria and each one of us gave our own Design Concepts based on the criteria we had agreed on. We had 6 design concepts and we had to choose the best one by weighing out all the options carefully. It seemed difficult at first, as all the designs proposed by each of our team mates were perfectly reasonable, but our facilitator paved the way as he showed us how to use Decision Matrix to evaluate all our options. Finally, we came up with Biogas Power Plant as the ultimate option. We acknowledged the disadvantages of Biogas Power Plant and we even came up with great solutions to tackle them.

We got our laptops on and started to Develop the Design, laying out all the pros and cons of the idea, the solutions to all the problems, how to implement it, who is funding the project and how to approach them, will it be sustainable and the short and long term effect of the project in terms of politic, environment, economy and social. We submitted the report at the end of the fourth day, feeling exhausted but extremely satisfied with the result. On Friday, we came to the presentation. We had a bit of experience talking in front of an audience because for the last four days, there had been some presentation exercises and we learnt a lot from it. By 4 pm, all the groups finished their presentation and received valuable feedback and comments from our facilitator and the Alumni presented on that day.

For the closing ceremony, we had to go to the St Georges Lecture Theatre and the Vice Chancellor of the Engineering Department gave us few words of wisdom and presented the prizes for the winning team. Even though my team did not win, I felt happy because I can finally understand what our dear facilitator meant on the first day of the GEC. From not being able to work as a team and messing things up, my team and I did finish the project wonderfully and apparently still kept in contact with each other even after the week had ended. I would recommend GEC to be implemented every year as it teaches new students that teamwork is important part of the future and I am thankful for this beautiful experience.

Meet our International Ambassador: Ifedayo Ayodeji

Name: Ifedayo Ayodeji

Course: Bioengineering

Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Ifedayo but everyone calls me Ife, which by the way means love. I am from one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, Nigeria. I started studying Bioengineering September 2015 in Sheffield and so far, it has been an experience.

My interest in engineering started with shows like Dexter’s Laboratory and Phineas and Ferb. I found it fascinating how you could create something amazing from ordinary objects and imagined building a ride in my background. I was surprised to find out how many different types of engineering there were. I discovered Bioengineering and fell in love with it after watching Robocop (2014). It is a new field in engineering that is rapidly growing and I am really excited to see how it would grow. Besides the fact that is it totally cool, I would love to be part of the people contributing to the growth of the field especially in developing countries like Nigeria and other countries in Africa.

As an international student, it is hard and scary to move from your home to a completely new place right? Well, for me, I was too excited to come to University of Sheffield because I knew it was the right place for me.

The first time I heard of the university was at a career fair in Nigeria. It is very difficult to find good universities that offer bioengineering as a first degree, University of Sheffield offers more than that, it offers opportunities beyond lecture theatres to implement what you have learnt and to grow as an engineer. With the Global Engineering Challenge and Engineering you’re hired, you are giving the opportunity to work with other engineering students on a project which is exciting.

The cultural diversity here is incredible, you get to learn about different cultures all over the world while in one place. Every culture is embraced and celebrated. Sheffield is such a beautiful city as well with so many places to visit such as the winter garden, peak districts and many more.

I came to Sheffield two weeks late and by the end of the week I had already made friends. Everyone here is friendly and there are so many societies, this is an opportunity to meet people with similar backgrounds and interests as you.

Academically speaking, it could really challenging here in Sheffield which is why Sheffield is 109th best university in the world and 42nd in Europe.

My experience here has been amazing and I have no regrets coming to University of Sheffield because it has become a home away from home for me. I have so many friends, places to go while getting one of the best educational knowledge and experience. I would gladly recommend it to my friends

Meet our International Engineering Ambassador: Cheuk Ying Tam

Name: Cheuk Ying Tam

Department: Material Science and Engineering

Hi, I am Cheuk Ying Tam. I came from Hong Kong to Sheffield last September to start my academic life as a materials science and engineering student. My passion of collecting cookware is possibly the reason I am interested in the science behind materials in the first place. But this was not a readily available choice of subject in the universities in Hong Kong so I tried to apply for overseas universities. I was excited that I got a place here. Yet I was struggling back then. It was hard to choose to leave the city which I had been living in since the day I was born to a totally different place. Now, I am glad to say that I have made the right decision.

Maybe it is not that fair to compare Sheffield with Hong Kong (definitely one of the busiest city), but I still find this city makes me feel calm and relaxed. My new hobby is to walk around in Sheffield. This balances out the stress from school and the frustration of thinking of what to cook for dinner every day. Nevertheless, Sheffield is closely connected to a number important improvements in the history of material development, especially steel. Isn’t this great?

Speaking of my course, yes, I know this is confusing because of the name but it is really an engineering course rather than a science one. Except for the fact that I need to explain the background of my course whenever I meet new friends - this course has what I need to be a decent engineer. We have lessons with students from other engineering courses. I have plenty of chances to interact with students studying other professionals. And we have interesting labs almost every week. Most of our labs take place in the Diamond, which means that we can get our hands on those newest and advanced tools. The session I like most this year is the sand casting of aluminium. My hands were shaking when I was standing in a huge sand pit and pouring red hot molten aluminium in to a sand mould.

Despite of the wide variety of activities available in the university, I think the skills week and the global engineering challenge (GEC) week are the two that engineering students will never forget. They provide rare opportunities to widen our horizon and show that the university values our potential to be future engineers. During skills week I had the opportunity to visit a steel factory near the city and I was astonished by the scale of the industry. This has become a trigger that urges me to apply for a summer internship in related industry next year. In the GEC week, I had a chance to work with students from other faculties of engineering on a project about food storage technology and brushed up on my soft skills.

And for sure, there are also lots of non-academic related activities. I feel that I can achieve many things here. I am looking forward to the coming two years and maybe I will want to continue my fourth year of study by then.

Veni Vidi Vici - GEC 2016 Edition

By Abhinav Kongari

Organised by Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and The University of Makerere, Global Engineering Challenge is a week where marvellous ideas are produced and unforgettable memories are made. Recreating a 9-5 work place environment, the students are tasked to work on an engineering project in interdisciplinary groups. The entire Faculty of Engineering is divided into multiple hubs and each hub housed 7-8 groups, administered by a facilitator. The most unique thing is that none of the hubs has more than one group working on a single type of project and this maintains the individuality and innovativeness.

This year the main focus area was the region around Bambui in Cameroon. Project topics ranged from Water Supply to Transport to Hygiene. All of these categories were suggested by academics from University of Makerere in Uganda and were based on real life issues. Having given you all an idea of what GEC was, let me take a more personal perspective on the competition.

I’m a Mechanical Engineering student and in my group I had students from the Department of Material Science Engineering and Aerospace Engineering. When these 3 disciplines work in a team, projects usually involve construction of buildings or automobiles or something similar. Our project was to devise an Anti-Poaching system for the African forest elephants in the Bamenda-Banso highlands in Cameroon. We had to have a cheap and robust solution and individual tagging of animals was discouraged. Having never met each other, the first day was spent on either arguing or sitting in silence. But, gradually we grew accustomed to each other, realised our strengths and weaknesses and started working on the project. The whole week was similar to a healthy symbiotic relationship where I got the opportunity to teach my teammates something new and vice-versa. The final solution that we came up with involve the usage of solar-powered drones to monitor the forest.

Everything related to drones usually involves computer programming and we had no Computer Science students in our teams. What did we do? We researched and learned the way to program drones through Arduino circuits, determined the angles at which they’d have to fly and even the view of their lenses. Even though we had no prior experience of the essential skill, we designated parts of the job according to individual strengths and then shared the knowledge amongst each other. Eventually, we were able to incorporate the idea in our project and completed it in time. I believe this was the prime motive of GEC, i.e. to find out the solution through teamwork and using each other’s strengths to succeed.

The week had 3 major milestones:

1)     Completing the project

It took a lot of effort. We had many failures and there were times when we had to start over again but we persevered and never lost heart. Finally, at the end of the week we came up with a design that we were proud of. Throughout the project, we learnt from each other’s mistakes and supported one another to every extent. It was my first project working in an interdisciplinary team and it shall be etched in my memory forever.

2)     Interaction on Alumni Day

We had the privilege of having Mr. Barry Tan as our guest speaker on the Alumni Day. Being a recent Alumni and having worked in prestigious companies like SNC-lavalin, Mr. Tan shared amazing experiences and also gave some profound advice. Talking about his past mistakes and experiences, he suggested students to get involved in co-curricular activities, participate in competitions and do as many internships as possible. His best statement of the day - ‘Don’t do a Barry’

3)     Winning the competition

All the hard work and effort was finally rewarded when we were awarded the ‘best communicated solution’ for our project. It was a great experience and I’m glad GEC provided me with this opportunity.

Finally, all I’d say is that GEC was a mixed experience for everyone. Some people were lucky to have hardworking and passionate people in their group while others were not so lucky. I believe this was a reflection of how life usually is. Not everything is always according to our choices but as long we persevere, everything eventually falls in the right direction.

Global Engineering Challenge 2015 – To be or not to be, a global engineer?

By: Andrei-Claudiu Roibu

“I just want them to know

That I gave my all, did my best

Brought someone to happiness

Left this world a little better just because

I was here...”

(Beyoncé – I Was Here, United Nations World Humanitarian Day – click for video)

This is how I would sum up the Global Engineering Challenge organised by the Engineers Without Borders in collaboration with The University of Sheffield. An activity designed to teach young engineering students the values of cross-cutting cultural cleavages, develop solutions for third world problems and so on and so forth. You can read more of this on the University webpage, for I am not going to reproduce what the official text says.

No, if you spend your time in reading this blog, then I will make sure it’s worthwhile and you will be able to understand how this activity works, and why I think that in the end, any student should take part in it.

Before I write anything else, let me just state that I believe that honesty is the highest form of respect you can show a person. Thus, I shall be honest with you and tell you that I never gave a single thought to developing world countries. Although I am come from a poor country, I am proud of it. I also believe that one should solve his own problems, be it a country or person. I became an engineer because I love the technology and lifestyle in western civilization, where I intend to stay and work.

We can get back to talking about the GEC, having cleared that. What is there to talk about? You would ask, considering that one of the reasons EWB runs this project is raising awareness among engineers of the problems in developing countries. Well, this is what I wish to tell you about. I wish to speak about all the other things that GEC teaches you IF you wish to the thought.

The first thing that it teaches you is how to work in a team formed out of people from different backgrounds and engineering fields. When you first hear of it, it sounds easy...let me tell you that it’s not, especially when everyone wants to be “boss” without doing any work. Luckily, I was blessed to work in a good team, where everyone did their job, and as unofficial team leader, I was more than pleased with the results. GEC week teaches you how to make a difference between your personal pride as an engineer and/or person and accept other people’s points of view. It is surprising in an interesting and often nice way to see how different ideas from different fields contribute to a project, and eventually things turn up much better than you would have ever expected.

The second thing that you learn is project management. As engineers, we will find ourselves needing to think about the feasibility of a project, because there are many things that can be theoretically done, but only a few that can actually be done in practice. GEC teaches you how to quantify what can or cannot be done, using specific tools such as SWOT and PESTLE analysis for the entire project, or Stakeholder Analysis in order to understand what are the needs of all the parties (or groups of people) that are involved somehow in that project. Also, as engineers working on a project, we often find ourselves needing to justify to second and third parties our decisions and choices. Decision matrixes are another very useful tool that one can use for this and GEC teaches you how to do. Speaking about justifications, a pivotal component in any project is the budget. Nothing is free in this world, and when designing a system as an engineer, you need to bear in mind that we live in a capitalist society (either if we like it or not) and in order to be successful, you need to achieve more for less, i.e. be efficient.

The third and maybe the most important thing that GEC will teach you, is how to manage your time effectively. The demonstrators have really strict deadlines for both the large, design task, and smaller activities. These time conditions are frankly annoying most of the time, and you’ll end up hating them and even giving up on doing some of the activities because of the hard deadlines. However, if you were in a real-life work environment, not meeting the deadline for even the most trivial of tasks could cost you your job and/or life’s work. It might sound pessimistic, but it is how the world works. In my team, we had a really hard time getting our heads around the time limits in the first two days. However, starting in the second day of the GEC week, we got our heads in the game, and decided on a clear way of handling tasks. Eventually, we ended up finishing our project early, and just sitting around and chatting for most of the final GEC day. I am quite proud of what we did, to be honest. Although we finished early, all our work was done properly and we managed to win “Best Communicated Solution” in our HUB.

I will cut it short here, as I probably bored you to death already. The take-home idea of this blog should be that if you keep an open head in any project in which you take part in, it is almost impossible not to learn at least one useful thing. I learned at least 3 useful skills doing GEC, and that is why I am honestly happy I took part in it.

For us as engineers, learning never stops, and I believe that the difference between a proper engineer and one that is an engineer just because he has a piece a paper saying that he is, that the first one never stops learning, either from nature, the people he works with, the projects he does or even events such as GEC. Vivere!

PS. I would like to thank my mates and colleagues from GEC, Hub R, Team 5: Dan, Max, Tony, Miguel and Terence – you guys were and are the best!

Engineering You're Hired Week 2014 - 2015

By Vimanyu Beedasy

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.

During the week, we had to get up early to reach the university at 09:00 from Monday to Friday. EYH differs from GEC in a way that we are left very much on our own during the day as we work in a team of 6 people towards finding an optimum solution to our project. We were placed in a hub where there were a total of 6 groups, all working on the same project individually.





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.

In addition to boardroom meetings, as a group we were given a question to answer every afternoon. These questions came directly from the website of some companies who are recruiting students or people to work as part of their application process. One of them was: “Describe a situation where you had to negotiate with and convince an individual/a team of people to see a different point of view or develop an idea they were not initially in favour of. How did you communicate your point of view and go about convincing them?” As someone who is still currently applying to some companies for internships, I believe that it will be very helpful to those who will be applying in the future.

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