A team from Lorien Engineering Solutions has won a high-pressure project management competition, emerging victorious from a highly competitive field.
Lorien were one of six UK companies to take part in the ECITB ACTIVE Cup, where teams of five oversee a simulated construction project. As first-time entrants and the only team to deliver the project on time and on budget, the Lorien victory demonstrates the strong engineering project management skillsets across the business.
This year’s challenge was to deliver a high-tech environmental monitoring centre along an industrialised stretch of South American river to a fixed price, negotiating loans and working under intense time pressure.
Organised by the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB) and now in its 26th year, the ACTIVE Cup is run in collaboration with, and hosted by, Cranfield School of Management.
Lorien Engineering, a division of GP Strategies Corporation, specialises in engineered capital projects for the food, brewing, drinks, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and logistics sectors. It also offers a range of safety compliance services.
Phil Colquhoun, Head of Projects at Lorien Engineering Solutions, said: “For us this is an opportunity to expose a wide mix of engineers and project managers to a live, high pressure environment where they can role-play a whole project life cycle.
“People from across the company work with each other where ordinarily they wouldn’t, so our team this year have backgrounds from business development management to brewery process engineer. When the competition is over, they can continue that communication and benefit the business.”
Andy Brown, ECITB Director of Operations, said: “Project management competence is the absolute bedrock of effective delivery of projects in our industry. Being able to forecast completion dates and the cost of a project is what keeps a project on track or enables people to make contingencies. This programme delivers that in three days of high pressure, immersive training activity.”
