We recently announced our success with Go4SET as our sponsored team from Gleniffer High School in Paisley won the West of Scotland Hub, which you can read more on here.

Mike Young, one of our Project Engineers, had been mentoring and supporting the team throughout the project since it began in February. He has seen them right through to the final, which took place on 5th June. Mike has provided an update on the final, as below.

“Coinciding with World Environment Day this year’s Scottish Final was held at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh where we were up against the winners from the other seven hubs.  Interestingly all the projects in the final were the same – Future-Proof: Designing Buildings for Climate Change.

Due to a lengthy hold up on the M8 we arrived late and the team had a much reduced time period to get organised but they took this in their stride.  Indeed they were commended by the assessors for being unfazed by this and for delivering their presentation as if nothing had happened.

Feedback from the assessors was again very positive with particular regard to the costing elements within the report.  Part of the introduction of the presentation summarised some of the early issues the team had experienced which required some tough decisions to be made resulting in some changes in team members.  The assessors were impressed that these issues were tackled head on and that subsequently the team had gelled and worked well together.

Our congratulations go to Whitehill Secondary School from Glasgow who were the overall winners.  Unlike the rest of the teams rather than start with a blank sheet of paper and design a house from scratch they came up with a plan to upgrade the tenements in the area around their school.

Whilst we may not have won it is no mean achievement to have got to the last eight from a total of 91 schools from across Scotland.

The photograph below shows our team with Richard Lochhead MSP, Minster for Further Education, Higher Education and Science and Julie Feest Chief Executive Officer of The Engineering Development Trust.

The boys did not go away empty handed.  As recognition of their efforts Taylor and Fraser gave each of them a gift token for a well known high street bookshop.

Their teacher pointed out that during the time between the Launch Day and the Final the boys had to select what they wanted to study next year and that they have all chosen a science subject.  This reinforces the worth of Go4SET in relation to STEM and the contact with industry and business that it offers young people.”

Taylor and Fraser are delighted to have been involved with this scheme once again and we wish the members of the Gleniffer High School team every success in their future endeavours.