The challenge

The Challenge is open to teams of up to five first year or second year students who are enrolled on an engineering course at a university the UK or any other IMechE international region.

Teams in the UK will compete in local regional competitions in March/April, leading to a national final for the regional winners hosted at the Institution’s London headquarters at the start of the following academic year. Teams in the international regions will compete on a similar basis towards a national/regional final.

Find out more and meet the finalists -  National Final 2019

What’s involved?

Each year students are challenged to undertake a specific project.

In 2019 the Challenge is to design, build and test a device to climb up the outside of a piece of 15 mm copper pipe lifting an increasing load in the form of a chain. At the top the device will reverse and return to its original starting point. The ‘device’ can be of any construction but it must be electrically powered and meet the size and cost specification. The relative performance will be determined on the quickest time taken for the device to pull the load to the top of the tube and return to the starting point at the bottom. Please read the project and general specifications.

The Challenge - four key elements:

1. Work in teams to design, build and test a vehicle to compete with other teams
2. Produce a poster to publicise the team’s work - demonstrating the team’s ability to sell their design solution
3. Give a short presentation explaining the design and development of the device - demonstrating the team’s verbal and presentation skills
4. Submit a peer review where all students have the chance to vote for the best engineered solution to the problem.