The North West Papers competition final was held on 17th May at the CUBE, Portland Street, Manchester. Candidates had to submit a 400 word synopsis followed by a paper of up to 4000 words.
The final consisted of a 15-min presentation to three judges and an audience followed by questions.The judges were Peter Hallsworth, Chris Wood (ICE G&S Chair) and Chris Hudson (ICE G&S Competitions Officer).
John Cook was the winner of this year's competition with his paper titled Evaluation of Coordinated Ramp Metering Strategies Using Microscopic Simulation. Aiming to improve traffic flow on major carriageways ramp metering is where traffic lights on slip roads are used to control the flow on the road. First trialled in Chicago in 1963 and first used in the UK in 1986, there are now 80 across the country. Cook explained how they work and presented evidence on their effectiveness, as well as insight on how the use of ramp metering could be more widespread. Along the way he shed light on the common misconception that maximum traffic speed is the most efficient and how the critical density of the traffic is the key to improving traffic flow. Stable and unstable flow conditions were shown on a video to provide clarity to the audience. Cook went on to explain how changes from stable to unstable flow cause phantom traffic jams to occur. Peter Hallsworth, one of the judges (pictured above left with John), presented the prize of a £100 Amazon voucher and added that Cook was a “natural speaker” who explained the “concepts with ease and used video footage to his advantage.”
There were three other finalists: first to present was Kouroush Azimi who presented a paper titled Civil and environmental engineering applications of an optimisation model, which showed how a mathematical optimisation model could be used to find suitable locations services. Azimi presented evidence of its use for contamination on an oil refinery in Iran where geostatistical data was used to find oil hot spots. Other examples were suggested from ambulance dispatch centres to borehole locations.
Aoife Nugent’s paper was titled Partnering in the UK Construction Industry - A Review of Partnering since its Recommendation by the Latham Report. Nugent provided context for the report within the construction industry and explained how the Latham report, produced in 1994, was different. There had been many reports before identifying problems with the construction industry in the UK but, unlike the Latham report, both industry and government didn’t support them. Partnering and its successes and failures since the report were then discussed resulting in a lively debate in the room.
The final candidate to present was Kyle Stott with his paper, A Study into Ternary OPC-Aluminate- GGBS Blends. Stott’s paper presented experimental evidence he had found when trialling new mixes. The mixes consisted of ordinary Portland cement (OPC), ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) and calcium sulfoaluminate (CSA). Comparisons were shown between commonly used concrete mixes and the trialled mixes.