Students Participate in a Design Challenge That Takes Them from the Classroom to ‘Real-world’ Engineering

The IMechE (Engineering) Design Challenge - which took part on Friday, 26^th April at the University of Portsmouth - allows students from universities and colleges experience a taste of ‘real world’ engineering. The Design Challenge helps them to design, create, present and run a device to a strict technical specification. In all, 59 teams from a total of 29 universities and colleges took place in the 2024 Design Challenge.

Bournemouth and Poole College competed in all three categories and winners later progressed to the National Finals on 3^rd May. The full list of results is shown below with the team details. In summary, Bournemouth and Poole College won a Gold, three Silvers and three Bronzes. 

The purpose of the Design Challenge competition is to simulate the requirements of a professional engineer so that students are exposed to the real world of engineering where they shall produce a comprehensive project, including many cross-functional activities.

Working in teams, students designed, built, tested and reported a self-contained device from a precise Project Specification.  This year, the challenge was to design, build and test a device to simulate an autonomous vehicle, such as driverless truck used in confined areas like docks, ports or mines, automated trolleys for warehouses or any other similar devices. The competing device needed to be capable of doing a repeatable task in a straight line, on a track, or laid horizontally.

The college took four teams in total:

• Concept Class: HNC Engineering (Mechanical Design) Year 2 
  • Saturn (won a ‘Gold’)
    • Jack Hanwell (Trident Maritime Systems)
    • Jack Falconer (Eaton)
    • Matthew Bradbury (Form Automation Robotics)
• Foundation Class: HNC Engineering (Mechanical Design) Year 2 
  • Mars (won a ‘Silver’ & a ‘Bronze’)
    • George Wright (Hoare Lea)
    • Cameron Parsons (Primetals)
  • BPC2 (won a ‘Silver’ & a ‘Bronze’)
    • Jacob Glassock (Eaton)
    • Finn Bolton (Eaton)
• Advanced Class:  FdEng Engineering (Mechanical Design) 
  • Mercury (won a ‘Silver’ & a ‘Bronze’)
    • Kieran Iles (Qinetiq)
    • Quillan McCulloch (Moore International)
    • Henry Le Couteur Bisson (Eaton).

Lecturer, Matthew White, HE Engineering Framework Leader, said: 

“Our students came out with an excellent set of awards for their efforts. Saturn came top of the bill with all other groups winning two awards apiece. Huge congratulations to all involved and what a group of teams we had representing our college. They did us very proud! This is the best set of results we’ve ever had at IMechE, and the students were focussed and dedicated to the task throughout.” 

If you’d like to learn more about IMechE, see: IMechE Design Challenge.