At this year’s recent Vertikal Days, Liebherr-Great Britain sponsored the two-day ‘My Future My Choice’ event for the third consecutive year.
‘My Future My Choice’ is a charity with the aim of promoting projects in engineering to young people to help them make career choices later. Students from Silverstone UTC took part at this year’s event working with staff and apprentices from Liebherr-Great Britain.
At the recent Vertikal Days trade show at Silverstone, Liebherr was proud to sponsor the two-day ‘My Future My
Choice’ event for the third consecutive year. ‘My Future My Choice’ is a charity that aims to promote engineering projects to young people. The young people involved are given an insight into what a career in engineering might entail by participating in a practical project that brings schools and businesses together to help those young people make career choices at a later date.
This year a group of Year 10 students from Silverstone UTC, which opened at the Silverstone Circuit in September 2013, took part on both days. Hugh Thomas, Director of MFMC and Workshop Leader, gave an introduction and demonstrated the principles of hydraulics and pulley systems before the young people were divided into teams. Working with a Liebherr-Great Britain apprentice or staff member, they were then tasked with building a crane from a cardboard template with the hydraulics simulated using a system of air-filled syringes and pipes.
Teams were given the opportunity to visit all the exhibition stands to research actual working cranes and gather as many facts about them as they could before the afternoon’s ‘Crane Off’ competition when each team had to operate its crane to pick up a ball and drop it into a bucket. The winners were the fastest to complete the task and prizes were presented at the Liebherr stand at the end of the day. The young people were also given the chance to take the mic and sum up their experiences of the day and everyone was given a goody bag to take away with them.
Hugh Thomas summed up the event by saying, “Liebherr apprentices, interns and senior staff are passionate about making young people of school age aware that mechanical engineering and lifting technology offer a rewarding and exciting career and lifestyle. Working with 70 young people across the two days was a team from Liebherr that was an international mix of ages, experiences and job roles. They inspired 15-year-old students to say that they would consider an apprenticeship with Liebherr as a career option and would be writing for more information when they approach school leaving age. The Liebherr team hit all the right notes with the Silverstone UTC students and a good partnership was forged between Liebherr and the school, which I am sure will benefit students in many ways. Apprentices mentored a team of five academy students through ‘build and operate’ challenges, assisted them with a tour of the Vertikal Days trade show and helped them prepare presentations at the end of the day.”
Ed Hudson, General Manager of crane customer and product support for Liebherr-Great Britain, commented, “Again it was a pleasure to work with ‘My Future My Choice’ at Vertikal Days. Our apprentices, interns and staff all appreciated and enjoyed the experience of promoting the industry to these young people and took away some excellent experiences from it. The project certainly triggered the imagination of many of the Silverstone UTC students who we hope will be talking to Liebherr about engineering careers in a few years’ time.”
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