This year the Engineering Development Trust launched a new scheme to replace the Engineering Education Scheme, providing Year 12 students a substantial team-based engineering project with a company sponsor.
The scheme is designed to challenge students, presenting them with a problem within the field of engineering, where the solution could be adopted by the sponsor company. Students are able to work on their project during periods of remote learning as well as in school.
James Plimmer, Subject Leader of Design Technology and Engineering at King Edward VI Five Ways School, tells us about the school teams and support from Severn Trent Water:
Severn Trent Water offered their support for the 11th year running and company mentor Matthew Poole was more than happy to sponsor our team. After discussion with the EDT and Severn Trent we were extremely fortunate that they also agreed to sponsor all of our Design Engineering students allowing us to enter two teams in this year’s event.
The two teams comprised of the following students:
Team one – Sam Bickley, Ali Ellabban, Finn Heathfield, Lewis Mathison, Hari Patel and Manya Sonsati.
Team two – Harpreet Dosnajh, Amaad Mahmood, Sanjay Malhi, Hugo Martin and Joshua Onisha.
Team one decided to focus their project on Hydroelectricity in a Drainage System. The project included a novel solution to use the flow of water from a sewage treatment plant to create additional alternative energy for the company to use or sell back to the national grid. Using careful research of hydroelectricity generation, CAD modelling and simulation the team were confident they had arrived a solution that could be scaled for a variety of water outlet dimensions and that could be easily serviced and maintained during its lifetime.
Team two decided to focus on a project using solar power to generate alternative energy for the company or to sell back to the national grid. The team were keen to produce a solution that would have minimal environmental impact and create a product that Severn Trent could easily adopt within their current infrastructure. The team designed an innovative solution that made use of a Floating Solar Array. The plug and play modular system provided a simple to setup and a universal system that could be positioned on Severn Trent reservoirs removing the need to buy or use any further land. This gave significant cost savings and minimised environmental impact.
Both teams demonstrated outstanding teamwork and resilience to complete the entire project during such difficult circumstances this year. The students have learned significant new skills including project planning and the communication required when working as a team. Both project reports were produced to an outstanding level. During graduation day team two received a special mention and recognition for their teamwork and project outcome placing them amongst the best teams entered this year across England and Scotland.
A huge thank you to the ongoing support from Matthew Poole and Severn Trent Water; it has been an incredibly difficult year and their support has been unwavering.
King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls also got involved with the project, partnering with Collins Aerospace who provided the materials and mentors needed for the process.
The girls produced a Social-Distancing Badge that utilises the RSSI (Received Signal Strength) to help with social distancing, which went on to win Best Overall Winner of 2021 Award. You can read their story here.
A huge well done to all of the students involved.
