Building bridges towards careers in engineering
IN an attempt to promote engineering career fields among youth in high schools, the South African National Roads Agency Ltd (Sanral) presented its third annual bridge-building competition in Port Elizabeth during the July school holidays.
About 34 academically deserving Grade 11 and 12 pupils from 18 schools in Nelson Mandela Bay participated in the competition. The event offered a glimpse into the world of civil engineering but also allowed learners to put their creativity, team skills and future engineering skills to the test.
The bridges were judged on aesthetics, weight and structural strength. Suspended weights literally stretched the bridges to breaking point in an ultimate showdown between the 10 teams.
The programme promotes engineering as a career among pupils who have the potential to go into undergraduate engineering studies at a tertiary level and enter future engineering fields after graduation.
It was hosted at Sanral Southern Region’s Road Materials Testing Lab in Struandale, in conjunction with Unity in Africa Foundation’s Incubating Great Engineering Minds (iGEMs), a leadership development incubator programme.
Woolhope High School pupil Litha Nohashe from Motherwell said: “Civil engineering is interesting and I strongly recommend it to those who think it is boring. The bridge-building competition surprised me . . . The event opened my eyes in terms of understanding my character and the way I do things.”
In the past financial year, Sanral has awarded 180 bursaries to learners and 300 scholarships for engineering-related studies at a tertiary level.