What did you want to be when you were at primary school?

When I was at primary school, I wanted to be a stunt man. This is because of a programme called the fall guy, I liked all the action.

What made you want to be an engineer?

There’s a lot of stuff going on in engineering, it’s interesting. I do like helping people and I like to see when people are doing well, you get to see there faces light up and this happens a lot in engineering.

What programmes have you been involved in?

• SME1
• Bicycle Club
• Leaders Award

What was your favourite and why?

SME1, you see more value out of it, you see the children getting involved I was doing them as a full class and you know how competitive they all are, they all want to be the best and it was enjoyable getting them all into teams and explaining you have to do certain things first before you can just start.

Also, I do enjoy Leaders Award because it is great to see all the children’s ideas at grading days, however, it’s difficult to pick a winner when on the judging panel as there are at least 10 fantastic ideas for each year group and you have to whittle it down to just 2 winners. I thought the SMA jacket idea was brilliant and the year before the toothbrush was great as well.

What schools have you been into/ supported?

Whittlefield Primary and Padiham Green.

After school stem club at Whittlefield 5/6 children and 1 afternoon 1 day a week for 10 weeks at Padiham Green with a full class of 30.

Have you seen a difference in the students from the start of the course to the end?

Yes, the children at the beginning were very hard to get engaged because all children want to get straight to the end, and they want to take ownership of the car. I struggled in the first week to get them all to listen, so I created my own little thing called Kenny Kash, I created little vouchers and I gave one out a week and a teacher gave one. Then the following week they could come and claim there Kenny Kash and swap it for a little bit of something I had picked up that week (sweets or chocolate). I found once I started with them that they wanted to get involved and be the best that they could.

What company do you work for and what do you do?

At VEKA PLC I am a production planner, so I plan the production for all the production lines and maintenance downtime. Planning is like a shopping list. We have customers who want different things, at different times and different quantities. It’s about making sure they all get what they, when they want it, the correct amount and in the time they asked for it.

What’s great about VEKA?

There’s a lot of good things about VEKA. There are good benefits/perks (early finish on a Friday, long break at xmas, attendance rewards, recognition events, etc). There is no ‘Them and Us’ culture, as all the management are approachable. We have a system (Bright Ideas) where we can share ideas for improvements and help make everyones life at work easier.

Has VEKA been supportive? If yes how?

Yes, I aim to do any extra work for the schools at home in my free time, but VEKA does allocate time for me to go to Primary Engineer events and into the schools. I had different times in each of the schools so I also structured the way I ran the course differently for each and created interactive production tables so when they had finished a certain step they could go up to the board and click the square next to their name and each time they had completed the task it increased there percentage at the end and they all couldn’t wait to get to 100. I enjoy being organised and ensuring it runs smoothly.

What benefits have you got from working with us?

Some benefits of working with Primary Engineering are the staff. They are always consistent in replying to any questions/issues I may have. It’s good to see that there are courses like this where the kids are able to do something different, involving both practical and written tasks, whilst having fun. So it’s beneficial to me, as I see it as a good sign, knowing that someone is organising and investing time for the future of the children.

What do you think of engineering careers being showcased in schools through our engineer visits?

I think when you go out and support teachers you can sense which children will become engineers, mainly from how keen they are. I feel that once you have an experience you are then able to decide what you want to know more about – you may even change your mind as there are many fields of engineering that you can work in. If Primary Engineer was to be in all schools, I think that more children would want to be engineers as you can see they are having fun whilst learning at the same time. A lot of peoples scepticism is that an engineer works in a garage or working with machinery. There’s a lot behind that, which they don’t know, and when they start to realise what other types of Engineer there are, they start to like the thought of being an engineer. I have noticed the girls seem to be a lot keener now.

What has been your best moment and why?

The best moment is coming along to grading, you’ve got different engineers sat around marking and discussing the children’s work. To see so much work from such a range of age groups it’s great. Some of the younger aged children have the best ideas.

Have you enjoyed working with us?

Yes, everything has gone very well, you have supported me through the whole process and if I’ve needed answers you have given them to me. I think the course is beneficial and it should be in the national curriculum. All the supports there, however, to make it even better I would have mini video clips to show the different stages of the SME1 course (Structures and Mechanism with basic electronics), which would support teachers and engineers.

Has it furthered your career in any way?

It has helped me as a person because you are dealing with different levels of people. You go from dealing with work colleagues and then to children. Being able to keep them entertained whilst working at different levels is difficult, so I created extra worksheets for the more advanced children when they are waiting for the other groups to catch up before moving onto the next step. (Such as worksheets for designing how they want their wheels to be designed).

(Worksheets Ben developed for the Structures and Mechanism vehicles for Pupils)

Why would you suggest for other engineers to get involved?

It’s a big eye-opener because you get to see what’s going on in schools, meeting different people and different school children which will grow to be our future generation of engineers. It’s enjoyable to be able to know I helped contribute to helping someone find that they love engineering. Primary school children don’t know what they want to do until they are 15/16 years old and you can see that with every programme, we are inspiring them to become engineers.

Please sum up Primary Engineer Programmes in 3 words

It is just ‘IBW’
Inspiring, Beneficial and Worthwhile 

The post Engineer Highlight: Ben Kenny first appeared on Primary Engineer.

BRENTWOOD, Essex, 04 July, 2018 – The Primary Engineer programme for 2017/18, which aims to encourage primary-school-age children into engineering careers, culminated with a celebration event at Ford’s Dunton Technical Centre. Around 120 students from 20 local schools took part in a day of competition to showcase the electric vehicle projects they had worked on for the previous eight months of the academic year.

Primary Engineer, a non-profit organisation, run a variety of engineering-based courses to make engineering fun and exciting, helping to inspire the next generation of engineers. Starting with a teacher-training day in October 2017, Primary Engineer linked Ford engineers with local schools to boost awareness of STEM related professions and support teachers and students in the practical aspects of the course.

“It is well recognised that introducing engineering principles to primary aged children can make a real difference in how they view the industry,” said Sarah Haslam, Product Vehicle Team (PVT) Manager, Ford of Europe. “The Primary Engineer programme leaves students with a positive impression of engineering as a creative and fun industry. This can only be a net benefit for the future.”

Ford Motor Company Fund, a non-profit organisation and the philanthropic arm of Ford Motor Company, supported Primary Engineer with a £15,000 grant to execute this programme. Ford Fund invests in innovative programmes focused on Education, Sustainable Communities and Safe, Smart Mobility. Ford has renewed this partnership for the 2018/19 academic year.

“The support offered by Ford allowed us to bring Primary Engineer programmes to schools across Essex, culminating in this fantastic celebration event,” said Dr Susan Scurlock, CEO and Founder, Primary Engineer. “The pupils have acquired a range of skills and shown a flair for engineering, and with our continued partnership with Ford we look forward to inspiring the next generation of engineers.”

Ford and Primary Engineer are both active partners of the Year of Engineering, a government campaign aimed at reducing the skills gap within the engineering industry. Government envoy to the campaign, Stephen Metcalfe MP, attended the event and gave a speech to the young students about the important role engineering plays in the UK economy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeJel6084so&feature=youtu.be

The post Ford and Primary Engineer Inspire 120 Young Engineers of the Future first appeared on Primary Engineer.

Meet the Engineer event attracts huge interest amongst Edinburgh schools more than two hundred Edinburgh pupils and their teachers attended a Primary Engineer event hosted by the National Museum of Scotland on Wednesday 15th November.

Pupils heard about the engineers’ life and work, had a chance to visit the stunning Science and Technology galleries at the Museum for further inspiration and then went back to school to answer the question “If you were an engineer, what would you do?” to be entered in to the nationwide Scottish Engineering Leaders Award competition.

The panel engaging with the young people brought unique perspectives to the event:

Vicky Hamilton, a 25-year-old product design engineering graduate from the University of Strathclyde, was inspired to invent and bring to market an upgraded kneepad said to decrease pressure on knees by 76 per cent after her tradesman dad’s knee complaints around the dinner table. Her Recoil Kneepads are now widely available.

Legal Engineer Philip Hannay is Managing Director at the award-winning Cloch Solicitors and lectures in Intellectual Property law and entrepreneurism (albeit normally to an older audience!)

Lynne McIntosh is a Senior Manufacturing Engineer at the University of Strathclyde’s ground-breaking Advanced Forming Research Centre. Although interested in maths and science at school, she had never considered a career in engineering until inspired by Dr Peter Hughes who spoke at the Scottish Summer Space School on behalf of Primary Engineer.

Last year, nearly 12,000 pupils in Scotland answered the question, If you were an engineer, what would you do? as part of the Scottish Engineering Leaders Award and this year it is expected that record will be smashed.

Short-listed and winning entries will be put on display at an exhibition on 7th & 8th June 2018 at the Barony Hall in Glasgow and one of the entries will be turned into a prototype by Masters students in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde.

The post NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SCOTLAND LEADERS AWARD EVENT first appeared on Primary Engineer.

Primary Engineer’s first Celebration Event of the 2017/2018 season kicked off in North Ayrshire at Elderbank Primary School. Supported by the team from GE Caledonian and some local engineers, 5 local primary schools attended with 13 teams of pupils with wonderful vehicle designs. To make the day even more special, GE Caledonian brought along a full size jet engine for the pupils to take a look at – inspiring future engineers. To top it off, GE Caledonian made 2 bespoke mini jet engine trophies for the team of pupils who won Best Theme and Best Communicators on the day. One teacher told us “it was a super day, the children loved it”.

The post NORTH AYRSHIRE CELEBRATION first appeared on Primary Engineer.

With the cold,snowy weather we still had all teachers attend our Primary Engineer training event on the 8th December in Oldham. Sticking with the cold weather we went for a winter wonderland themed Key stage 1 project for the teachers to ‘pimp’ up their vehicles.

The post OLDHAM TRAINING first appeared on Primary Engineer.

Primary schools from both North and South Tyneside, Durham, Sunderland and Teesside were supported by organisations including Nissan, South Tyneside Council, Elring Klinger and the North East Automotive Alliance to enable them to have their teachers work with engineers and be given the tools and resources to deliver an engineering activity with the support of a Classroom Engineer to their pupils.

The teacher training day delivered by Primary Engineer is one of a range of courses that teachers can attend and then deliver in their own classroom. Each course is specifically designed to be commensurate with the appropriate key stage curriculum. This includes Early Years, Primary and Secondary school programmes and Primary Engineer offers further opportunities for young people to display their creativity through its hugely successful Leaders Award competition open to all schools across the UK.

Training day – SASMI (Skills Academy Sustainable Manufacturing Innovation) Nissan

A cold December morning was left behind as the teachers signed-in at SASMI Reception with each having an empty shoe-box under their arm. The humble shoe-box was a pre-requisite of attending the course and was the central resource to the “Structural and Mechanisms with Electricity” activity which was the workshop being focused on for the day.

Teachers were taken through the different stages of shoe-box car design and constructed their own models using tools and engineering methodologies with which many were unfamiliar. Their first task was to build a basic model “Apprentice Level 1” with a shoe-box on wheels decorated with a Christmas theme. This is a task that could easily be replicated with their younger pupils combining creativity and functionality. The day progressed to “Engineer Level 2” with the construction of a wooden chassis to support the axles/wheels, motor, battery and shoe-box and needed to be able to overcome challenges including negotiating the ascent and descent of graduated ramp.

The teachers were given both the practical and online resource links to deliver the activity in their classrooms, and also the opportunity to invite an Engineer along to support the sessions. Participating schools are part of local hubs which hold a Celebration event where school teams compete across the different Apprentice/Engineer levels before a panel of judges, and the winning teams are invited to represent the hubs at the Regional finals at the end of the Summer term.

The teachers attending the day were very enthused “I had a fantastic day with a good amount of practical and theory based learning. Good facilities and a vast amount of knowledge from the experts on offer………Very practical and everything modelled well ……..Really interesting day which helped develop my skills and confidence, and a good support to my limited knowledge about engineering……..Thoroughly enjoyed the day and the project is one that we are planning to use within a whole school engineering week next term. I can see it motivating many of our children.”

Rohan Kohli, North East Automotive Alliance also enjoyed the day “I am the Classroom Engineer working with Cragside Primary school. As a former pupil of the school and I am really pleased to be given the opportunity to possibly inspire some of them to want to become Engineers.” 

Liam Weatherill, Primary Engineer Regional Director (North)

The post SOUTH TYNESIDE TRAINING first appeared on Primary Engineer.

The post VOLKER WESSELS TRAINING first appeared on Primary Engineer.