This year's ‘Evening with the President’ Event, on 2nd February, started a little belatedly as ICE President Richard Coackley was delayed at a previous engagement with none other than Prince Charles. As excuses for lateness go that’s quite a concrete one (pun semi intentional). The late start did however allow all attendees to take full advantage of the ample refreshments provided with many going back for seconds and, impressively, thirds.
The president then opened proceedings with a talk on how important the role of civil engineering, specifically investment in infrastructure, can be in times of global economic hardship. This point was highlighted using contrasting examples from recent visits to Hong Kong and Ireland. Hong Kong is a vibrant expanding city with a multitude of major civil engineering infrastructure projects ongoing. The continued investment in civil engineering is providing a well needed boost to their economy. Conversely Ireland currently has a distinct lack of investment in major engineering projects which is adding to their economic slump.
With the serious part of the evening over the fun and promised frolicking could commence. The challenge set to the graduates and students present was to construct a device capable of transporting a load (maltesers) vertically and horizontally 30cm using a variety of assembled objects.
Amongst other things the provided objects consisted of a hairdryer, a fan, string, many elastic bands, an abundance of lolly sticks and sellotape. After 90 minutes of frantic sellotaping, blue-tacking, knot tying and wondering why there were so many elastic bands each team was (more or less) ready to demonstrate their contraptions.
Each team was given 3 minutes to transfer as many maltesers as possible without human intervention.
Of a total of nine teams only two managed to successfully meet (most of) the brief and of these two only one winner could be declared; The hydro power team with a total of 9 whole maltesers transferred successfully. The evening concluded with a brief thank you from the president and farewell to the G&S Committee chair Katie Goode who is leaving for a civil engineering job in New Zealand.
By Colin Walkley, Graduate Civil Engineer at Sellafield Ltd