Royal Academy of Engineering - Ingenious

Ingenious: On the right track

About the project

Using the exciting backdrop of Dundee City's £1 billion Waterfront Regeneration project, On the Right Track: Engineering and Education for All, is bringing engineers from research, industry and academia together with school children, teachers and the wider community.

Focusing on the rebuilding of Dundee Railway Station, the project is providing the audience with an opportunity to understand the science and technology behind engineering the build in a real life context – literally from the ground up.

The importance of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects and the value of the knowledge and skills of the engineers in the development of the city's built environment will be brought to new and diverse audiences locally and beyond.

For more information on studying civil engineering at Abertay visit: https://www.abertay.ac.uk/course-search/undergraduate/civil-and-environmental-engineering

Activities so far

The Royal Academy of Engineering project has built connections with more than 1,500 school pupils and families from across Tayside.

Staff from Abertay have organised a series of engagement activities designed to teach youngsters about civil engineering while improving the communication skills of engineers themselves.

Using the new Dundee Railway Station project as a focal point, organisers created teaching sessions and information banners, before designing a range of simple construction tasks to be carried out in schools and during Dundee and Fife science festivals.

Children learned about the complexities of operating the project over live railway lines, removing the old railway station and building the foundations for the new station.

They also learned about installing new and protecting old services such as electricity, telephone cables, water and green infrastructure networks and the railway station superstructure.

The sessions included family drop-in workshops where parents and children were encouraged to construct and compete against each other.

Volunteer engineers were challenged to explain complex engineering and scientific ideas and processes confidently, avoiding any jargon, to communicate the message that the wealth and well-being of society is dependent upon engineering.

The project team have developed with the engineers, in class learning activities and classroom materials that use the railway station to illustrate engineering concepts related to the curriculum.  Please find the teachers resource packs below.

The team

Project Leader: Dr Daniel Gilmour

- Programme Leader MSc Construction Management, Division of Natural and Built Environment (d.gilmour@abertay.ac.uk)

Project Managers: Neil Berwick and Alison Duffy

- UWTC Project Officers, Division of Natural and Built Environment, Abertay University

n.berwick@abertay.ac.uk | a.duffy@abertay.ac.uk

Project Partners: Gerry Conway

- City Development Department, Dundee City Council

This project is funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering's public engagement grant scheme, Ingenious.

Ingenious supports project across the UK that creatively engage the public with engineering. The Ingenious scheme is supported by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

Further information on the scheme is available at: www.raeng.org.uk/ingenious