Civil Engineering October 2021 | Vol 29 No 9

Civil Engineering October 2021 53 the Thursday before the competition. The Friday morning of the competition kicked off with an informative presentation by Glen Hockley from PERI on the stresses and strains to be taken into account when designing a bridge. The bridge building kits provided to the teams contained 25 sticks of 3 mm nom- inal thickness, glue and some string. The teams got down to the gruelling business of planning, designing, measuring, cutting dowel sticks and constructing their bridges while racing against the clock towards tools-down time. This year three Meranti sticks, which are much stronger than the rest of the pine sticks, were included in the kits to see where the teams would apply them in their designs. The event sponsors also took up the challenge on the morning, constructing a bridge with the same equip- ment and found it, in their own words, not as easy as it looks. The meticulously constructed bridges were left to dry for a few hours before the adjudicators assessed them based on aesthetics, weight and load-bearing ability. During the evening event the bridges were tested to destruction and some of these flimsy bridges carried unexpectedly heavy weights. During the prize giving SAICE CEO and civil engineer Vishaal Lutchman encouraged the teams to consider civil engineering as a career, highlighting how they could contribute immensely to the development of service infrastructure and communities in South Africa. He emphasised that they could also build bridges between people in the country. In fact, many of South Africa’s current engineers had their first taste of civil engineering during this impor- tant competition. Bridges are tested to destruction to determine their load bearing capacity A bridge taking shape with meticulous planning, measuring, cutting and gluing Third place went to the team from Hoërskool Jim Fouché: Dirk Hugo, Sephan Lagrange and Gerhard Ceronio Getting the measurements precise Completed bridges ready for judging