The national finals of 'Where There Is No Engineer' 2019 took place at St Laurence's, TU Dublin Grangegorman campus, on Saturday, April 6.
'Where There Is No Engineer' (WTINE) is co-ordinated by the Development Technology in the Community (DTC) Research Group in TU Dublin and Engineers Without Borders Ireland.
Now in its fifth year, this development education initiative provides participants with the opportunity to learn about design, teamwork and communication through real, inspiring, sustainable and cross-cultural development projects. By participating in the programme, students and professionals have the opportunity to design creative solutions to real life development projects.
The overall award is sponsored by Davies Group Ireland. The Davies Award funds the winning team to travel to the local country to implement their design concept with a local development partner.
This year’s theme was 'Forced Migration', which brought a specific focus to displaced populations. Recent data from the UN shows that over 68.5 million people worldwide are forced into leaving their homes due to climate change, war, persecution or economic reasons.
Develop concept designs to improve community resilience
Participants are encouraged to develop concept designs to improve community resilience under six development themes: Self-Supply Water and Sanitation; Community Participatory Health; On and Off Grid Energy Systems; Climate Resilient Infrastructure; Food Security; and Applying Big Data in the Community.
This year more than 300 students from six colleges participated in the programme. Following a number of regional finals the 11 best projects were chosen to participate in the national finals.
Each team presented their design concepts to a panel of judges drawn from industry, professional institutes and the development sector as well as a large audience in attendance.
After some difficult deliberations, the judges selected Suzelle Hamman from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) as the Overall Davies Award Winner for her project Chaleur, a low-cost heater and clothes drying device to help reduce cases of trench foot and illnesses, particularly in European refugee camps.
Hamman will travel overseas with one of EWB Ireland's NGO partners to carry out research and development of her concept further in-country.
Innovation Awards to facilitate concept development, kindly sponsored by the Arup Trust, were awarded to Enya Carroll and Conall Casey also from NCAD. Carroll’s project Plantern is a flat-pack kit to grow herbs and medicinal plants designed for Rohingya refugees living in Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh, while Casey’s project Crutch Kit, is a modular crutch design which makes the most of locally available materials.
Converted shipping container with education resources
The prize for best poster and prototype display went to Ana Pereira, Leslie Jones, Jeremy Price and Jason Hood from IT Sligo for Rubix Education Centre, a converted shipping container with education resources in recognition of their impressive concept model and wind turbine display.
Engineers Without Borders would like to acknowledge MC for the day Dr Sean O'Hogain of TU Dublin and the judging panel who volunteered their time to participate: Declan Alcock, director of EWB Ireland; Andrew O'Connell, Roughan O'Donovan; Lisa Vaughan, Engineers Ireland; Dan Morgan, WTINE winner 2016 designer at Accenture the Dock; Aoibhin Flanagan, Arup.
The 2020 edition of
'Where There Is No Engineer' (WTINE20) will be launching in September 2019. For further information please contact
katie.mahon@ewb-ireland.org