With our Team Design topic we get back to the purpose of engineering sciences, solving problems to make the world a better place. The cooperation with an NGO will give the contribution of Europe’s brightest engineers shape. The future leaders of Europe will now take the challenge to improve the world by taking action.
An open mind and a broad view is needed to reach the best results.
About the first competitions inside BEST: BECs, and the development throug Local, National and Regional Engineering Competitions culminating in EBEC..
Engineering Competitions became and are a real part of BEST since the start in 2002.
The first real experience of besties with an Engineering Competition (EC), came in March 2002 when some besties went to the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC). They came back very enthusiastic and started to promote the idea for this kind of BEST event. On ICF 2002, General Assembly (GA) 2002 and some summer courses in 2002, small team designs and debates were organised.
The board saw that the idea was appreciated a lot and asked David Gonzalez (one of the besties who had been on the CEC2002) to create an international working group and to work out the idea in more detail. A call was made in the end of August 2002 to all besties and soon an enthusiastic group of besties started to create the first EC-Handbook.
On Presidents' Meeting (PM) 2002 this EC-handbook was presented. Competition Working Group (CWG) became officially a working group of BEST and it was decided to let this working group organise the first BEST Engineering Competition (BEC) (at that time called BEST European Engineering Competition or BEEC) together with an LBG.
LBG Eindhoven and LBG Ghent were highly motivated to organise this first B(E)EC together with CWG, and so it would be done From 17 till 23 October 2003 the first B(E)EC took place in Belgium with 60 participants from all over Europe. Half of them participated in teams of 4 people in a 2-day Team Design, the other half in a 2-day Case Study, followed by a presentation day. In the evenings 32 participants debated in teams of 2 people. The atmosphere was fantastic and everyone had a lot of fun doing the tasks and enjoying the social program.
After that CWG got requests from several LBGs to organise a BEC together with them. But the board decided to organise also in 2004 only 1 big B(E)EC, to give CWG next to that time to work out a second version of the EC-HB and to work out a scenario how to continue with this project in BEST.
The second B(E)EC was organised by LBG Warsaw and CWG with help from baby member Gdansk from 8 till 16 October 2004 in Poland. 80 participants participated in either Team Design, Case Study or Negotiation and could also take part in the debates in the evening.
At the same time, compies (CWG members) thought about the different possible scenarios for the future. What came out was:
- if more BECs would be organised, CWG could not provide tasks for all of them. But a quality check was important. So, LBG's have to make tasks themselves and CWG will check them and give feedback to help to improve them;
- A BEC should be organised like a course, only the course part is replaced by the actual Engineering Competition.
- It would be really nice to have several BECs followed by a 'final' BEC for the winning teams. This is not immediately possible, but we should grow to this. For the coming year(s) only separate BECs will be organised. After that we can start thinking of organising also a 'final' EC on European level or even European-Canadian level.
The proposal of making BEC-events was accepted on PM 2004.
In 2005 following BECs are/will be organised:
- BEC Sofia (March 2005)
- BEC USTU (May 2005)
- BEC Zagreb (September 2005)
Also structural changes are taking place in 2005. CWG is merging with SPOC, as the organisation of both courses and BECs is becoming similar. In the new formed team, some people will check the quality of courses, others of BECs, while the general organisation of both types of evens is followed by the whole team.
Next to the organisation of several BECs also a lot of LBGs started organising Local ECs themselves. In 2003 there were a few already organised, in 2004 there were already 15 local ECs organised, some of them being really successfully with up to 100 participants and several categories. Also on a lot of internal and external BEST events a small EC is organised as an activity.
All in all, the Engineering Competition project has grown up a lot in only few years. But lets not forget about the future years. Think ... where your mind can go!
