Young Members deliver first Speak Out for Engineering Competition in UAE

December saw the UAE deliver its inaugural SOFE competition for young members in the emirates.

The Young Member committee of United Arab Emirates organised the most prestigious public speaking competition (SOfE) Speak out for Engineering on 18 December 2015 at Dutco Balfour Beatty Training Centre Jebel Ali, Dubai.

Speak Out for Engineering (SOfE) is a competition organized for engineers by engineers and is conducted annually by the IMechE Volunteer Network across the world. It was established to challenge young engineers to prove that they could ‘communicate effectively’, an important area for today’s developing engineers. In the competition, the speaker should give an individual oral presentation on a subject relating to mechanical engineering for not more than 20 minutes, followed by a 10 minutes Q&A session from the audience. 

IMechE UAE Young Members were proud to be the host of this country level competition for the first time in the United Arab Emirates.

The young mechanical engineers who organised and took part in in December’s competition are Student Affiliate members of the Institution and are from reputed engineering organisations, namely, Heriot-Watt University Dubai, University Of Bolton RAK Campus and American University Dubai. Members of the Institution from the industry sector in the UAE also participated in this competition.

The honorable judges for this competition were Mr. Lee Hormer (Project Director of BK Gulf) Zakaria Chandroth (Senior Mechanical Engineer) and Haitham K.M. Mokhtar (Senior Project Engineer offshore O&G) 

This event was graced by the presence of honorable guests from faculty of Heriot-Watt University Dubai and University Of Bolton RAK Campus. They were Dr. Mehdi Nazarinia, Miss Shimna Shafeek and colleagues.

After intense competition and wonderful presentations by the talented speakers, Mr. Brandon Maben stood winner presented the topic, “Different Principles Required to Design a Tank for Sulphuric Acid Storage” and and Mr. Nikshan Cooray was the runner who presented the topic, “An Introduction to Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)”. The champion will receive £300 plus certificate while the runner-up will receive £200 plus certificate.

Aaqib Raza, UAE Young Member Country Representative says: “I am really glad that this was first ever competition organised by IMechE in UAE and I was amazed and happy to see such a response and attendance of the people on that day. We got a very positive response and more than 35 young members of IMechE attended the event. The faculty of different universities, judges and guests from the well renowned organisations were there and they were really thankful to IMechE for initiating such a competition in this country. They were feeling proud of the participants who presented such a good and innovative ideas. They motivated all for the future also.” Aaquib has since been selected to represent the Middle East and Africa Region of the Institution as the Regional Young Member Representative.

To read more about the Institution in the UAE or in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) Region please visit the IMechE UAE Near You and MEA Near You pages of this website.