Engineering students in winning team

A team of engineering students and graduates representing ICE Wales Cymru has won this year’s ICE Graduate and Students Communication competition. The team, entered by Mott McDonald, included two School of Engineering students and two of our graduates, as well as a student from Swansea University. The students, Dan Richardson and Rhys Williams, and graduate students Robin Smith and Tom Doughty, were presented with their award at ICE headquarters in London.

The ICE competition aims to promote the importance of effective communication among ICE’s more junior members. The award winning team had to use both engineering and interpersonal skills to impress the judges and the audience during the presentation of their project. They were required to present an imaginary project which was aimed at helping a local community.

“We were representing an imaginary organisation known as 'Bright Homes', tasked with redeveloping a city centre residential area,” said Dan Richardson.

“We chose a scheme which involved the demolition of 8 existing tower blocks and the design of a new estate which featured a mixture of housing and new shopping and leisure facilities with good rail links, and the addition of a new college,” he explained.

Three teams competed in the final and the judges were impressed with the delivery of all of the presentations, however, it was the ICE Wales Cymru team's excellent delivery and outstanding interaction with the public audience that won the judges' votes.

"We were impressed with the quality and the thought behind all of the presentations and delighted to see the confidence with which they were presented," said Zara Lamont, one of the judges of the final.

"It was a close call between the teams with the deciding factor coming down to how well the teams handled the challenging questions and concerns raised by the audience. The team from ICE Wales Cymru demonstrated great empathy for the issues raised,” she said.