MY GEC EXPERIENCE 2017 – by Muhammad Zainudin

Tuesday, 7 February 2017

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.

Veni Vidi Vici – GEC 2016 Edition

Monday, 29 February 2016

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 2016

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

By Muhammad Shuja

This blog will give you an insight about the Global Engineering Challenge in general, something engineering undergraduates take up in their first year at Sheffield.

This will be the time you realise the impact engineers and engineering itself has on the real-word and how much the world is in need of engineers for various aspects of the industry, all the way from healthcare to agriculture.

Teams of 5 or 6 students from different engineering disciplines will be asked to come up with a solution to real-life problem, which they have to present to an audience of other teams, a facilitator and some alumni of the university. Each team is assigned a work space in a hub where they have a facilitator to guide them through the decision-making progress. This seems daunting at first but a lot of support is offered to students in the form on introductory lectures and first hand help from facilitators since the university realizes that the students haven’t transformed into perfect engineers to come up with solutions to such tough problems after just one semester. The whole point of GEC is to allow you to push your comfort zone through working in a multi-disciplinary team where you work with total strangers from different backgrounds and experiences. You deal with both the merits and hurdles of this situation, a skill which is very necessary after graduation since this is what engineers do a lot. All team members get to be the leader for a day which allows to boost leadership and communication skills as you have to work with people with different leading strategies. There are awards for the “Best Professional Behaviour” and the “Best Communicated Solution” at the end of the week.

Another very interesting part of GEC is the Alumni Day. This is when you get to meet graduates from the University who are working for various firms in the country and get to know their experiences and explore various opportunities for summer placements or industrial placement years. The best thing about this event is that you get to have face-to-face information about a particular company from someone who is currently working there, which allows you to make a sound decision when it comes to applying for placements or even graduate jobs.

To summarize, the Global Engineering Challenge allows you to work in a multi-disciplinary team, work on a real-life project, learn about different branches of engineering, have an experience to talk about in interviews or job applications, and explore various employment opportunities … all of this in just one week!

I’ve posted a link to this year’s GEC website where you can get an idea about the sort of projects students work on and also a video ( https://youtu.be/ZGU3fMmClaY ) about this year’s GEC.

GEC Website

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

Tuesday, 31 March 2015

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!

1. 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 is about teamwork!

Monday, 14 April 2014

Written by: Birju Galaiya

Hey guys! It’s been a while since I wrote a blog- assignments and courseworks have kept me busy. I now have a 3 week Easter break where I plan to go through lecture contents and complete tutorial sheets. Oh and also try work on 2 assignments! I hope to take a break and escape to the peak district and also spend some time with relatives back in London before coming back for the second part of this semester. But before that why don’t I talk to you about the workshops I have had as an engineering student. In this blog I will talk about my experience during a weeklong workshop known as the ‘Global Engineering Challenge’.

In the first year I did not have any exams in January (such a relief!) but as a mechanical engineering student, it was compulsory to undertake a week-long workshop just before the second semester began. Students from most of the departments were involved including Civil, Chemical, ACSE, Aerospace engineering. Since we were about 900 students, we were split into teams of 5 students all studying different courses. Groups were put into different rooms known as ‘Hubs’ where a postgraduate facilitator guided us through the week.

Our task was to come up with a sustainable engineering solution to help rural Vietnamese people living in the Mekong Delta which was one of the poorest regions. We had several options on what we could do- improving sanitation, using renewable energy to power the houses, ensuring the water is safe to drink and perhaps using a suitable material to build houses. I was excited about having this opportunity to put into use the academic knowledge I had gained in my first semester and also solve the challenges involved. Being in a group of five, all doing different courses, we knew that we should select an idea taking into account the skills set we possessed as a group. Having two mechanical and one electrical engineer, we decided that finding a solution for a reliable source of energy was ideal for us. Although all other options were tempting to undertake, we used our decision making skills to choose a solution that would suit us the best- reliable source of energy.

Taking initiative, I became the group leader and ensured we had a goal that we would try achieve. As the week went by, I enjoyed working with the group members I had- they were friendly, enthusiastic and we didn’t have major disputes. During that week it was snowing so we decided to use the snow as an opportunity to have a team bonding session. Yes- we made a snowman! It was especially fun for me because it was the first time I had seen snow (apart from movies obviously). I think this made the team stronger and more determined to win the challenge.

Coming up with a pioneering solution to the problem required us to work as a team by brainstorming about the design, reliability and viability of different types of renewable energy solutions like solar power, wind energy or harnessing the energy of the water in the river nearby. After choosing solar panels we researched about the numerous factors such as maintenance required, optimum size of panels, and safety of equipment including the battery. We finally estimated the costs of the design and presented it to staff and fellow colleagues explaining the decisions we made. Although our solution did not win, our confidence in presenting it led us to win the ‘Best Communicated Solution’ award for the hub. We were really happy because not only did we get a certificate, we also got cup-cakes to celebrate our victory in style!

I gained so many skills- teambuilding, leadership, inter-personal skills, creativity, researching….I could go on and on! These are the skills employers are looking for and with this experience I was more confident in working as a team. At first I was disappointed that we couldn’t make our own team and that we were meant to attend 9am-5pm daily with only a lunch break in between. But at the end of the week- I made new friends, learnt how to work with them and realised that the 9am-5pm would be standard for any job.

To have a read on the challenge go onto http://gec.group.shef.ac.uk/

To see a video go onto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1ij8AcsMCU (try spot me!)