Students from the University of East London got their hands dirty last month at the first of a series of Constructionarium events held at the National Construction College in Norfolk.

During the five-day exercise the 48 civil engineering students split into two groups to build scaled down versions of the Ravenspurn Oil Rig and the Kingsgate Footbridge, with the aid of staff from Duffy Construction and consultant Atkins. The groups had to elect managers and produce programmes, method statements and risk assessments before they moved onto the practical tasks such as steel fixing and fixing formwork.

Final year student Rajanmol Sing Turna said: ‘You don’t really appreciate what techniques go into building it until you see it in reality. Now I know I really want to work on site.’

The two-hectare site within the NCC’s Bircham Newton campus plays host to a number of universities and their partners from the industry to give students hands-on experience of working on site.

l In this year’s CIOB student challenge, held on 17 April at head office in Ascot, the eight teams from universities and colleges around the UK and Ireland were asked to become logistics consultants for the day.

The contestants presented their submission, based on a real project, to judges who posed as clients: Canute Simpson and Adrian Blumenthal of Construction Skills, Adrian Boughtflower of Westfield and Dr Sarah Peace, CIOB research manager.

The winner was the London South Bank University team.

In second place was Galway Mayo Institute of Technology, while the University of Central Lancashire came third and Southampton Solent University was highly commended.

Source

Construction Manager