Guttridge would like to congratulate the Boston Grammar School year 12 students that were voted second overall in the student vote yesterday at the celebration and assessment day for the Engineering Development Trust۪s (EDT) Engineering Education Scheme (EES). This is an incredible achievement, there being over 50 groups attending the assessment day, and demonstrated the team۪s project management and presentation skills as well as their engineering talent.

Run by the Engineering Development Trust (EDT), the EES is a 6 month program that links teams of Year 12 students with local companies to work on real engineering problems. It offers students the chance to be involved in real-life engineering projects alongside experienced engineers and the results of the projects themselves can add real value to the businesses involved.

As part of the scheme, the students have to work hands-on as part of a team working on a project that is relevant to a local company. They attend professional skills lectures on communications and project management, meet professional and graduate engineers and technologists and see school physics and technology applied in an industrial environment.

The students worked with the Guttridge design team to create a chain conveyor test bed, as described in the following project objective:

To design and build a short chain conveyor section, to test the impact of flight design and machine inclination on efficiency and to provide a test bed for future component testing.۝

The students designed and manufactured the machine, ensuring that consideration is given to the same manufacturing efficiencies and raw material costs that would be experienced in an engineering industry environment. Once the chain conveyor was manufactured, it was used a test bed on which to run a series of tests to obtain results about the impact of flight design and machine inclination on conveying efficiency. The results of this project can be used by Guttridge engineers to influence future machine flight design and to influence commercial decisions about options involving customer machine inclination requirements.

Peter Guttridge, Chairman of Guttridge Ltd, who has been involved in the EES for the last few years, and was present on the celebration and assessment day, commented:

The EES is a really good scheme to participate in because it gets youngsters involved in real-life engineering projects and pushes them beyond the boundaries of anything that they may have experienced before. The entries are always very impressive and there are lots of companies of all sizes involved. Most importantly for Guttridge, it compounds relationships with local schools and encourages young people to think about careers in engineering.۝