A project that challenges young people to design stadiums is helping build bridges to a career in the built environment
Ninety 12- and 13-year-olds used a skills outreach event in London to pitch their designs for new football stadiums to professionals from the likes of HS2 Ltd, Multiplex, Ramboll and Mott MacDonald. Their plans included features like cross-laminated timber, solar panels and road tunnels to divert traffic away from residential areas.
The students were taking part in STEMFest, a programme designed to inspire young people into careers in fields such as engineering and construction.
“Reaching out to students within this age range plants seeds in their heads and hopefully a lot of them end up taking a STEM subject”
Emmanuel Afolabi, Ramboll
The event, held in hospitality suites at West Ham United’s London Stadium, was an initiative of the Fest Hub football-themed outreach programme developed by Ramboll civil engineer Emmanuel Afolabi. It marked the culmination of a seven-week part-time programme spent learning with industry figures about engineering and construction, where students planned stadiums and pitched them to judging panels. There was also a competition to see who can build the strongest bridge across two chairs using the materials they are given.
Among the stadium judges was Ramboll UK managing director Philippa Spence. She told Construction News that the presentations she saw were “wonderful”. Spence described as “magic” the process by which the children go from not having any connection with engineering and construction, to being able to design their own buildings.
Asked what she as a business leader gets out of spending a day at the event, she said: “We struggle in our industry to get enough people to join it. We’ve got a number of different issues; we’ve got insufficient diversity, in terms of gender and ethnicity, so we have to work hard to try to encourage and enthuse people to say this is a great industry to work in.”
The Fest Hub’s Afolabi added: “I believe reaching out to students within this age range is important, as it helps them make better-informed decisions about their GCSE choices. It plants seeds in their heads and hopefully a lot of them end up taking a STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] subject following this programme, as well as in their A-levels and beyond.”
The three schools involved were the Palmer Catholic Academy in Ilford, east London, Northolt High School in the west of the capital and Bexley Grammar School in the south-east. Each was assigned a football team – West Ham, Queens Park Rangers and Charlton Athletic respectively – and staff from each club’s community programme worked with the pupils.
The companies involved were also divided up between the schools, helping to teach them about the industry ahead of the main STEMFest event.
“What the Fest Hub is doing, in using the power of football to engage young people in STEM careers, aligns with HS2’s ambitions to create a sustainable skills legacy,” said Ambrose Quashie, legacy manager on the high-speed rail megaproject.
“The Northolt students developed some incredible design concepts and demonstrated skills that will be vital for the future transport infrastructure sector workforce.”
The judges were full of praise for all three schools that took part, and there was widespread agreement about the value of such an activity for the industry.
“Construction is not really promoted as a career of choice [enough]. It’s [often seen as] a fallback,” said Multiplex social value and community manager Amy Dawson. “This initiative is giving them the tools – and the knowledge that all of these things are out there. They might be our next generation of construction people.”
She added: “It’s a brilliant industry and there are so many different opportunities – we just want to promote that.”
