Building Bridges at Bushey Mead School

Two Rendel graduate engineers recently spent a day at Bushey Meads School near Watford as part of Rendel’s STEM engagement with schools. Ahson Reza and Matthew Talib gave a presentation to introduce year-eights students to civil engineering and gave them the challenge of making a truss bridge out of household objects.

Building on work done by Rendel colleagues last year, Ahson and Matthew gave the students scaled drawings they could use to turn 2-D blueprints to a 3D object.

Ahson and Matthew agreed that it was a privilege watching the students work in teams and seeing how they all approached it differently. Some went beyond the brief and added their own spin on things. For example, instead of using more strands of spaghetti to make the bridge stronger, reinforcing it with buttresses.