The YEA National Case Competition 2021 has just come to an end, with the competition a way for Engineers Australia to support our student members who may be finding things difficult at the moment with the Covid-19 restrictions currently in place around the country. We wanted to make sure they still had the opportunity to interact with others, build their networks, learn new skills and most importantly, have fun.

The dedicated and hardworking YEA members from around the country formed this year’s case competition committee and volunteered their time and competition experience to the planning and organising of the competition as well as the reviewing and judging of the 53 competition submissions.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year’s competition. The caliber of submissions received was exceptional and we would like to acknowledge the hard work and effort put in by every team that participated.

Team Sniff Sniff from Monash University took out the top gong, with the team awarded $1,500 in gift cards, virtual tickets to the Climate Smart Engineering conference as well as the opportunity to present their winning submission during the conference.

Team The IT Crowd from Australian National University were declared as runners-up and were awarded $500 in gift cards as a team prize.

The overall theme for this year’s competition was aligned to Engineers Australia’s Climate Smart Engineering conference and the problem statement was based on the event’s five key themes of sustainability.

A case competition is a fast-paced simulation of a real-world project condensed into a few weeks.

Multidisciplinary teams of three to four student engineers work together to solve a problem and provide a set of deliverables within a short timeframe. Each team then submits a tender outlining their proposed solution and the tenders are reviewed by a judging panel.

YEA would like to thank our panel of industry judges who offered their time and engineering knowledge to the final event were:

  • Mark Bonner, Climate Change Program leader, Engineers Australia
  • Dr. Ben McGarry, Future Energy Capability Leader, Aurecon
  • Sophia Hamblin Wang, Chief Operating Officer, Mineral Carbonation International (MCi) & and Director, CO2 Value Australia
  • Rhys Anderson,  Generation Leader for Environment & Resource, Arup
  • Brenda Denbesten, Chemical engineer for 15 years, STEM empowerment coach