As part of the celebrations for Women in Engineering Week, thirteen Year 10 students took part in what has become a brilliant annual event hosted by Catherine Downes and Sonia Smith of Amey Engineering, Speke.

Saint Julie's were up against students from Co-op Academy in Bebington. Our students were superb ambassadors for Saint Julie's, working together and using their STEM and creative talents to demonstrate incredible leadership, problem-saving skills and teamwork.

They were challenged not only to design an improvement scheme for The Strand, but had to take into account environmental impact, traffic flow (cars and bikes) and pedestrians, optimising and enabling access to key architectural features, traffic lanes, roads, cycle lanes, pedestrian areas, crossings, traffic lights whilst considering materials, costs and specifications.

Working in three teams facilitated by an Amey employee, they came up with amazing schemes. The challenge ended with individual team presentations explaining their designs, the rationale behind them and then responded a set of questions from the two judges who were both professional engineers - one from Amey and one from Wirral Council - which was no easy task, yet they rose to the occasion splendidly!

There were real stars amongst our students and so much effort and great spirit that it was a shame that only one team could win. The winning team were Abi, Isabelle, Grace and Eleanor who were outstanding and were presented with a trophy to keep and vouchers to spend. Everybody was given a generous goody-bag to take away. Huge congratulations to the whole group - Charlotte, Charlotte, Ellie, Niah, Liley, Freya, Katie, Ava and Azuo. Equally huge thanks to Catherine, Sonia and Neil who were amazing guides.