Nearing the finish line...

We’ve realised that the weeks are starting to run out and we still have plenty of work to do. Caroline has taken 3 weeks holiday which started from the end of week 5. I have continued to work.

It has been very easy for me to work on my own. I have felt confident arranging and going to meetings by myself or with an academic. The main bit of work to do was getting the project list sent out to the academic staff from the Civil Engineering department and now it’s a waiting for game for supervisors to sign up.

We have completed a list of projects with various organisations;

DJDH architects – Myrtle Triangle
- What underlies the land; Malago interceptor, abandoned coal mines etc.
- Heat extraction technique
- ‘Eco-village’

Southville Community Centre
- Traffic re-routing

Sustainability Unit – University of Bristol
- Monitoring energy usage across the university, in particular monitoring fume cupboard efficiency
- Ways to reduce energy usage and increase the efficiency of fume cupboards

Forum for the Future
- New site developments
- Creation of sustainable urban drainage schemes
- Interdependencies of infrastructure in the area

Bristol City Council
- Incorporating sustainable technologies onto Council buildings, old and odd shaped

Low Carbon Southwest
- Thermal Energy Grid

Hamilton House
- Sustainable techniques

Windmill Hill City Farm
- Considering the sustainable options for an independent community centre located on an urban site

Each project has one academic supervisor. When we started this placement we didn’t really think about each project needing a supervisor. Supervisors usually set up projects on the back of their own research so making them want to sign up to our projects will be a challenge but one we are hoping they will do. We need to make the projects sound attractive enough to them.

What happens to the projects that we have set up but can’t run as we don’t have a supervisor??

This isn’t a short term project by the University. They want to incorporate community based projects across the other departments and for many years. This improves the University’s relationship with the various communities but also gives the students many extra skills that they wouldn’t have got if they were doing the ‘standard’ projects. Our placement gives the University a contact list that they can approach in the future to set up more projects. Some of the projects we have set up won’t only be a one year project. There is potential for some to be a 3^rd year this coming year and 4^th year the following year.

The list we have compiled is a mixture of 3^rd and 4^th year projects. We have found that many of the projects would be better suited being design projects and this seems to be preferred by the supervisors as it means that the project has actual design outcomes. This I believe will also be preferred by the community partners.

What has started out as ‘try and set up 5-6 Community projects for 3^rd year Civil students’ has turned into a list of 10 projects that we hope to definitely run this year; 6 3^rd year, 4 4^th year, 3 projects that we have as potential future projects and some ideas for projects that we can send to other engineering departments. The fact that we have 10 projects is great, very happy. Everyone who we contacted has been very helpful, very willing to help us with what we are trying to achieve. If they themselves did not have any ideas of projects they would give us the details of those who may have some ideas. At the start I was worried about who were going to approach, how would we know where to start? We were given a few contact details by Philippa and it all kicked off from there and rapidly gained momentum.

The challenge now is to get supervisors on board and finalise the projects.

Any thoughts, advice and guidance would be very welcome!