On 3 June 2010, a special event took place for all the final year BEng Civil Engineering students of the University of East London (UEL) to celebrate their achievements during this year’s Constructionarium residential field trip.
Constructionarium is a six day working field course for BEng Civil Engineering students. During the course they construct scaled down versions of bridges, buildings, dams and civil engineering projects. The Constructionarium site is a purpose built training area of 2 hectares within the grounds of the National Construction College at Bircham Newton in Norfolk.
UEL’s Constructionarium course took place in April 2010, and was sponsored by Mitchellson Formwork and Civil Engineering Ltd, who supplied all of the materials, equipment and resources for the event. Neil Mitchell of Mitchellson was the guest of honour at June’s event (pictured above), and he presented students with certificates of achievement. He spoke of the enthusiasm and keenness of all the students and their willingness to “get stuck in” to the two challenging bridge building projects; one based on the slender Kingsgate Bridge in Durham and the other, on the inspiring cable-stayed Brewery Wharf footbridge in Liverpool.
Paul Standing, the student project manager for the Kingsgate Bridge team and a student member of the ICE, then gave a short presentation on what he and his team had learned and experienced. Paul talked about the amazement of chartered engineer colleagues at Clark Smith Partnership, Aldgate when he described his experience at Constructionarium. Unlike him, they had never had the opportunity to partake in a hands-on construction training experience whilst at university. Paul went on to describe how he and his fellow students had benefited from the experience.
“We’ve all been party to a construction project from inception to completion, and involved in all aspects of modern construction practice, from planning to heath and safety, from method statements to environmental considerations. We have all witnessed first-hand the problems that can occur on a construction site with regard to sequencing of works and construction methods and we’ve had an opportunity to think outside of the box in order to achieve the ultimate goal of completing the project on time, within budget and of course, safely.”
It was not only the students who received praise but also the two graduate engineers’ from Atkins, Xinye Le and Tec Xi. Both acted as checking-engineers throughout the project, scrutinising the setting out, build-ability and structural issues for both bridges.
Also at the event was Robin Holdsworthy of Constructionarium and Anusha Shah, Chair of ICE London Region. Robin commented that the quality of the Kingsgate Bridge work was the best that he had seen for the Constructionarium project so far.
Ian Lemon, UEL course tutor (pictured above with Neil Mitchell) was also at the event and praised the support of Mitchellson, who have supported the UEL for the past two years. Ian expressed profound thanks, and stated that without their dedication and commitment in supporting students, the results would not have been possible.
UEL’s BEng honours in Civil Engineering is one of the university’s most popular and dynamic technology-based courses and the university welcomes applications from all able students with the appropriate entry qualifications.
For further information, contact Ian Lemon at I.m.Lemon@uel.ac.uk or 0208 223 6017.