Ardnamurchan High Wins Bridge Building Competition

A team from Ardnamurchan High School have won the Lochaber finals of the Construction Bridge Building Challenge.  

The event, organized by Construction Industry Training Board and West Highland College, was designed to provide an opportunity for teams of four 2nd year pupils to gain insight into practical engineering and construction.  

This was the 6th year the school had taken part in the completion and pressure was on to maintain the schools unblemished record.  

This year challenge was to design and build a wooden bridge to span a 1.1m gap and which could carry the maximum load for the minimum cost. All 5 competing teams spent time developing their ideas for their bridges and finally settled on their designs. 

Ardnamurchan B developed an innovative cross between a Bailey bridge and an inverted V, the first time the judges had seen such a design concept.

The next 3 hours were spent in feverous construction of the bridge using plywood, MDF and a glue gun. Finally all the bridges were tested to destruction where all three Ardnamurchan High teams performed brilliantly.  

In first place overall were the Ardnamurchan “A” team Ruby Sansom, Jessie MacPherson and Chloe Hamilton whose design supported an incredible 65Kgs.  

Coming second were the Ardnamurchan “C” team of John Clark, Cameron Morris, Rowan MacGillivray, Jack Powell 

A team from Mallaig High School came 3rd and the third team from Ardnamurchan featuring Kate Bradley, Eilidh Ross, Lucy Drury,  Ewan MacDonald and Connor MacNeil came 4th  

Iain Hogg from the schools Technology Department said: “All three Ardnamurchan teams were commended for their excellent designs and their first class team work. As well as taking first place overall, we were delighted that the Ardnamurchan “C” team won the “Best Design” Competition, which was a first for our school in this event.”  

ENDS