An evening with the President 2011
ICE President, Peter Hansford, spent the evening of 4th February with 30 Graduate and Student members of the ICE constructing towers out of wooden blocks.
The purpose of this bizarre event was to allow young members of the ICE the chance to meet their President and quiz him on what he intends to do in his year in charge.
The evening started with the attendees being split into teams. Each team had a model of a tower built from wooden blocks that they had to replicate. The only difficulty was that the model they were copying was in another room and only the designated Architect and Project Manager could see the model. They had to remember what materials needed to be ordered and pass this information onto the Quantity Surveyor. Once the QS had delivered the materials to site, only the Foreman could build, but he could only build from the drawings the Draughtsman produced. This game was designed to show the stages that went into a construction project and hopefully highlight to people how their role fits into the bigger picture and the difficulties that others have.
This challenge was then followed by a questions and answer session where Peter had to answer some taxing questions about his vision for the ICE, how he intends to assist Graduates find jobs and what challenges he thinks face young engineers of today.
Peter thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to meet ICE members in such a relaxed environment and gave great feedback to the event organisers. Thank you to all who were involved in the evening and if anyone would like to assist in organising next year’s event please get in touch with the North West Graduate and Student committee http://www.ice.org.uk/nwgs
Chris Wood, NW G&S committee