Kilmac was delighted to support STEM Week at Blairgowrie High School, with Matthew and Stevie delivering our interactive “Build It From the Ground Up” STEM Challenge to pupils.
The session was designed to give young people a practical insight into the work that takes place before a building is complete, introducing areas including earthworks, drainage, foundations, roads, footpaths, services and landscaping.
The session began outdoors with the Kilmac Site Detective Challenge, encouraging pupils to look at their own school environment from an engineering perspective.
Working in teams, they identified drainage and considered where water would flow, looked at high and low points across the site, assessed pedestrian and accessible routes, identified potential hazards and sustainability features, and considered which elements around the school may have involved groundworks or civil engineering.
Back in the classroom, pupils became part of a fictional Kilmac project team and were challenged to design the infrastructure surrounding a new school.
Working from an A3 site plan, each team had to incorporate roads, parking, accessible spaces, a pupil drop-off area, footpaths, cycle storage, drainage and attenuation, and green space – all while working within a £500,000 project budget.
Pupils took on different construction roles, including Project Manager, Engineer, Quantity Surveyor, Site Manager and Environment & Community, giving them an opportunity to experience some of the different skills involved in delivering a construction project.
To make the challenge more realistic, each team was then faced with an unexpected change from the client. Rather than starting again, they had to adapt their existing design, manage the implications and explain their decisions before delivering a short client pitch.
The session finished by connecting the skills pupils had used throughout the challenge with real careers including civil and site engineering, quantity surveying, project and site management, sustainability, social value, groundworks and plant operations.
A huge thank you to Matthew and Stevie for delivering the session and sharing their industry experience, and to Blairgowrie High School for welcoming Kilmac.
Through activities like this, we aim to give young people meaningful opportunities to engage with the construction industry, understand the variety of careers available and see how STEM skills are applied to real projects every day.
