Heriot-Watt students at the CIOB Scotland Student Challenge

Construction Project Management (CPM) and Quantity Surveying (QS) students from Heriot-Watt University came second and third in the Student Challenge competition hosted by the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) Scotland.

Second and third place

Both teams enjoyed the CIOB challenge. Speaking on behalf of their team, Freeman Gordor and Ibrahim Al-Ruqeishi said “The CIOB Scotland Student Challenge was a great learning experience, a good opportunity to blend academia with professional practise. The challenge offered the platform to collaborate, trust the effort of team mates and come out with concise results within a limited time frame. Time management and allocation of responsibilities to appropriate team members were the main success factors for our team and we are proud of what we achieved as a team.”

Teams of four students from construction project management and surveying disciplines at universities in Scotland took part in the challenge at Crieff Hydro on 26 February. Heriot-Watt entered the competition with two teams and both teams impressed the judges with their ideas and supporting arguments for expanding an existing airport or constructing a new airport to increase Britain’s capability to cope with the increasing air traffic demand.

The team of Moyra Coutts (QS undergraduate Year 4); Cheryl Loke (QS undergraduate Year 4); Ermioni Zacharioudaki (CPM postgraduate) and Gabriel Harvey (QS undergraduate Year 3) came second and the third place went to the team of Ahmed Sharif (CPM postgraduate); Ibrahim Al-Ruqeishi (QS postgraduate); Freeman Gordor (CPM postgraduate) and Rakan Hareeri (CPM postgraduate).

Moyra Coutts and Cheryl Loke recommended all other students to take part in the challenge in the following years: “The CIOB Student Challenge is a great opportunity to represent Heriot-Watt and to build the skills necessary to work within the construction industry. This was one of the best experiences we had during our studies and we learned a lot from each other. We have found it to be an enjoyable and rewarding day and would highly recommend others to participate in 2015.”