With just less than 100 days to go to the London 2012 Games it’s starting to get interesting – especially for me as an engineering student and a sports fan. I can’t wait for the 100m men’s final! I anticipate history in the making.
I’m fortunate to currently be on an industrial placement with Arup, who happen to have done some work for the Olympics, how amazing is that! The time I joined Arup, the engineers at Arup were doing some work on the Orbit and the London Aquatic Centre – both at the Olympic park – and I’m privileged to interact with some of the team that did the design work for the two. The scope for Arup included the design of the structure, building services, acoustics, sound system design, fire and security.
I have also been working as part of a team designing a sports city in Jedah, in Saudi Arabia. The sports city comprises a football stadium, athletics stadium, sports hall and a mosque, has equipped me with vital experience in the design of sports facilities – exactly the kind of experience will be of paramount importance if the next time the Olympics come to the UK.
The University’s emphasis on producing graduates who are employable is achieved by having courses that are tailored to the industry and encouragement to take industrial placements, which put me in a good position to be able to use my skills and knowledge to work on delivering future Olympics events – next time they come to the UK or any other place.
The projects that we get to do as students at University are very practical and have a lot of transferable skills to real world problems.
Bearing in the mind the research facilities and the members of staff we have at Bradford I am more than sure that graduates from the Uni would be able to use up to date skills and knowledge to produce better sustainable and environmentally friendly designs, that will benefit the community by delivering the best possible Olympic games.
Just one small example – a second year project I worked on looked at radar guns used to measure the velocity of moving objects. In future games, this could help develop the next generation of equipment used to measure the athletes’ speed accurately in the competition. It is these types of graduate skills and research that have played a huge part in making the Olympic Games the success they ought to be.
At a Fun Fair in London in the spirit of London 2012 Games!
London 2012 I can’t wait!
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