It is estimated that 820,000 science, engineering and technology professionals will be needed by 2020 - with 80% of these required in engineering.
The Big Bang Civil Engineering Classroom Challenge, organised by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) in conjunction with Class of Your Own, the Gaelic Athletics Association and Mott MacDonald, will task school children aged 8-16 with devising a way to turn the Casement Park Stadium in Belfast into an emergency shelter for 500 victims of a hurricane, and producing a newspaper report which explains how they achieved this. The children will however - with the help of a civil engineering mentor - have to complete the challenge in the mind-set of the year 2064 – fifty years from now.
Prizes on offer include a 3D printer from Ultimaker and a Design Master class from Mott MacDonald for the winning school. There will also be three runner-up prizes supplied by Topcon, of measurement bundles which include a digital level, staff and tripod, a laser distance meter, measurement wheels and tapes.
The Classroom Challenge follows on from the 2014 Big Bang Fair last month, which welcomed record numbers to Birmingham’s NEC. Over 70,000 young people, teachers and parents attended the Fair to see science and engineering brought to life and the “Design, Create, Solve, Innovate” engineering stand - a joint venture between ICE, Arup, Balfour Beatty, Mott MacDonald, Skanska UK Plc and Taylor Woodrow - saw over 1,500 visitors.
Activities and tasks on the stand included Skanska’s “Mission Cube” – an immersive video experience used for health and safety training which transported youngsters to dangerous engineering sites around the world to identify risks. There was also an augmented reality model of Casement Park stadium – the focal project for the Classroom Challenge – which is set to transform the GAA site in West Belfast into a new state-of-the-art Provincial Stadium.
Local event: The Big Bang Fair Eastern – 8 July IWM Duxford
Glen Owen Regional Director, said: “Iconic structures like the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway,the Shard and the magnificent 2012 Olympic Stadium rightly thrust civil engineering into the spotlight, but civil engineering is also about protecting and adapting the infrastructure around us that we depend on every day and take for granted – our roads, railways and bridges, our energy and water supply, our waste networks and our flood defences. They have to keep these networks running and adapt them to meet many future challenges - from population growth which places greater demands on the networks, the effects of climate change and natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes.
“Put simply, civil engineers have to come up with solutions to often very complex problems and through the Classroom Challenge we want to give school children a taste of life as a civil engineer – not only the challenges, but the satisfaction of being able to make a real difference to people’s lives.”
The closing date for entries to the Classroom challenge is 1 July 2014. School's wishing to enter the challenge should email [email protected] to receive more information and be matched up with a civil engineer mentor. For further information on the Challenge see: http://www.ice.org.uk/bigbangclassroomchallenge
___________________________________________