Building Bridges with St Bernadette’s
Recently, WORKS teamed up with project management firm Currie & Brown, architects AWW and engineering firm Hoare Lea – who are responsible for local landmarks like the Cabot Circus Shopping Centre – to explore career paths, problem solving and team working skills in the construction industry. Working with a group of young people from St Bernadette’s Catholic Secondary School in South Bristol, we challenged them to plan and build an iconic bridge to celebrate Bristol as a beacon of hope and inspiration.
Much more goes into the design and building of a structure than you might think. Teams from all sorts of backgrounds have to work together to make sure the building is fit for purpose, is comfortable for people and it looks good! Architects handle the aesthetics; engineers ensure that the electricity and plumbing work the way they should and finally, project managers make sure that everything stays in line with the all-important budget.
After finding out more about the different roles, the students were divided into groups. Their task: work together to design a new bridge to serve as a symbol of Bristol; a beacon of hope and inspiration. As well as considering design, the teams also had to think about environmental issues around materials, to reflect Bristol’s status as a Green City and figure out how to manage their budget. Their designs also had to overcome some practical elements; did it span a wide enough gap? Could a boat sail happily underneath?
Each team were assigned a mentor who helped them assess their strengths and find the roles that best fit; did they have the skills to manage the budget? The eye of a designer? The technical mind of an engineer? Were they a good risk assessor? Could they keep everyone on track and in line? Once roles were claimed, it was time to get designing.
The teams took the brief in many different directions – everyone was able to make a bridge that did what was asked of it, and each team’s design met the key criteria of the brief. Along the way we had some last-minute redesigns as structures showed they were not as strong as first thought, and some innovative ideas as to how to minimise costs and show off our sustainability credentials.
The students who took part told us how tasks like this improved their teamworking skills and taught them to work together to come to solutions everyone was happy with. One student found it very helpful that the professionals took the time to explain how they got into their current jobs, and another found the range of careers demonstrated through this one build to be a helpful nugget of information to help them consider their future.
The team from Currie & Brown, AWW and Hoare Lea enjoyed empowering the students, and giving them the tools to figure out tricky technical elements of their bridges as well as meeting the architects of the future!
