Guy MacDonnell ICIOB, a quantity surveyor for Interserve Construction, has won the CIOB’s competition to design a building in the computer game Minecraft.
One of five finalists, MacDonnell was announced as winner after receiving 52.9% of the public online vote for his build of the CCTV Tower in Beijing.
The competition, which attracted 77 entrants, was launched to mark International Construction Management Day on 9 March. Participants were challenged to design either the Shard in London; Beijing’s CCTV headquarters; the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur; Sydney Opera House; or the UK’s Houses of Parliament.
An active player of Minecraft since it was in beta in 2011, MacDonnell decided to build the CCTV Tower as he believes it was the building most appropriate for the game.
He said: “I thought it was the building best suited to the medium. I was always going to go down the route of an elaborate interior and the CCTV tower was the most interesting building to facilitate that.”
MacDonnell went into great detail when planning his build including “doing research with the building plans and elevations and [then projecting] that information to suit the size of the plot of land”. However, he points out that building in Minecraft allows for greater freedom than in the real world: “In real life the building represented a huge engineering challenge for Arup, but in Minecraft there’s no gravity!”
Winner: Guy MacDonnell
In a nod to the Considerate Constructors Scheme he placed hoardings around his build complete with a sign that says “Site Safety Starts Here”. This was one of several signs placed in the model to create an interesting fly through, he explains. “To make sure the walk around would be entertaining, I used many signs filled with typical office and construction messages to parody the fact that this is an obviously fake building.”
The CIOB believes that Minecraft can be instrumental in getting young people interested in a career in construction. MacDonnell hopes his status as an experienced gamer doesn’t put off young people from experimenting in Minecraft.
“I hope that I haven’t discouraged anyone from the younger generation due to winning by experience. It is my belief the study of games is an undervalued academic subject which holds the key to understanding incentives within business procedures. Minecraft is a rare example of a game that implicitly asks the players what they prioritise,” he says.
International Construction Management Day began in 2010 as a partnership between the CIOB, the International Project Management Association (IPMA) and the Construction Management Associations of America (CMAA), Japan (CMAJ), and Korea (CMAK), to celebrate the role construction management plays in securing healthy, fulfilled populations.
The CIOB celebrated last year’s ICM day with a competition to spell out the letters CIOB in an interesting and imaginative way, which was won by a stop motion animation depicting tiny Lego construction workers building the letters CIOB from various materials.
