CIOB Bright Futures Challenge finalists in the London/South East regions
The CIOB Bright Futures Student Challenge 2020 took place recently with finals in the London/South East and the North West regions.
This annual student competition pitches teams of four built environment students from regional universities.
The final for the London/South East started off on a football stadium site with VolkerFitzpatrick, the event sponsor, giving the students a tour to help them gather information for their upcoming presentations. Each team was randomly assigned a question covering a different aspect of the site and construction and given two hours to work on a 10-minute presentation to a panel of judges.
The judges were John O’Grady, commercial director building division at VolkerFitzpatrick, Anthony Clarke, operations manager at VolkerFitz-patrick, Alan Williamson, M&E manager, Multiplex Construction Europe and Dan Ryder, senior project manager, Durkan.
The winning team was from London South Bank University (LSBU) – Lauren Webster, Ben Clark, Luke Stanley and Royden Gilbert – in their second win as a team. Second place went to the University of Brighton team – Dominic Harris (who won Outstanding Student at the London regional), Joseph Broom, Taka Musimurimwa, and Melissa Dias.
Third place went to a team from the University of West London (UWL) and included: Javid Jivraj, Aljay Johnson, Gabriele Simkute and Marvin Corbin. Fourth place went to another team from LSBU with just three members: Livia Giulimondi, Christian Montano Perea and Evgenii Krutasov.
The outstanding student award went to Taka Musimurimwa from the University of Brighton.
At the Student Challenge in the North West the winning team was from the University of Salford, made up of Chris Townsend, Ivan Dangov, Elaine Huskinson and Phoebe Shore.
The best individual on the day was Chris Townsend from Willmott Dixon. Chris is a third year Construction Project Management degree student and is three years into a five-year management trainee scheme.
Townsend has demonstrated a lot of drive to get to this stage of his career. He left school without qualifications and began working as a groundwork labourer.
“I spent years learning the trade and enjoying it, making my way up to a 360 excavator operative,” he says. “Then an infection in my left eye rendered me blind in it and I had to give up my dream job of excavator driving.
“I applied to do a HNC at university to get a formal qualification and after completing year one of the course, I successfully applied for the Willmott Dixon management trainee scheme.”
Highly commended was University Centre Blackburn College: Rebecca Salter, Michelle Priestman, Brent Eastwood and Richard Bulock.
