IMechE Design Challenge: Helping universities align with industry needs

On October 4, 2019, The Institution's Design Challenge finalists will convene in London to demonstrate how well they tackled this year’s task—designing and building from scratch a device capable of climbing up the outside of a 15 mm copper pipe while loaded with a metal chain.

According to Tim Baker, the Challenge’s deputy chair and professional teaching fellow at the department of Mechanical Engineering of University College London, the event is expected to attract industry representatives looking for fresh engineering talent. 
“People from the industry are really interested in these types of competitions,” said Tim. “And that’s something we are trying to encourage. We invite industry guests who do the assessments of the designs and they actually use the Challenge to unearth the really talented engineers already among first year students. They offer them summer placements and eventually graduate jobs.”

The Design Challenge, launched in 2015, is, according to Tim, a stepping-stone to the more advanced IMechE-supported competitions such as the UAS Challenge or the international Formula Student, which allow students to work on complex projects just like they would in the real world. Such competitions, Baker said, are helping universities to align with the actual needs of the industry by teaching essential skills that can’t be acquired in the classroom.

“I worked in the industry for many years and used to employ graduates,” said Tim. “Frequently, it would take months before they would be able to actually do anything practical. They wouldn’t have been around the procedures, the protocols, and that’s why we need something like the Design Challenge to improve those aspects.”

Tim said that frequently, the high-ranking, academically acclaimed universities such as UCL or Imperial College, do a worse job in teaching their students practical skills and their graduates are therefore less sought after by the industry than graduates of the less prestigious bur more hands-on oriented schools.

“UCL, for example, only joined the Design Challenge a few years ago,” said Tim. “It has been really transformative both for us and our students. Many of them have been to interviews for internships, placements or graduate positions, and they say that what their interviewers wanted to talk about the most was the Design Challenge—things like working in a team, dealing with conflicts, decision making. It’s a mini version of what they are going to face in the real world.”

Tim hopes that in the future, more universities will incorporate the Design Challenge into their regular curriculum. Specifications for the next year’s Challenge will be released in September. This time, students will have to build little catapults capable of launching squash balls and hitting a 30cm target at the distance of eight metres—all that with a budget of only £25 for first year students. Second year students, who are expected to use more electronics, are allowed a budget of £100.

The Design Challenge National Final 2019 will take place on 04 October at IMechE HQ. Book your tickets here.