Yesterday, "The Great Magway Make Off" team building day took place at our Test Facility Centre at Wembley. The objectives of the event were to strengthen communication, understanding, collaboration and morale within a team, as well as promote creativity and problem-solving skills and, of course, to have fun.
The day started with icebreakers where the team was divided into smaller groups of team members who may not typically work together regularly.
The groups were given a brief to complete a task of designing and building a carriage to move a quarter-euro pallet-sized tote in the most aerodynamic way possible, look like an animal and be “fit for purpose”.
The judging criteria were: aesthetics, aerodynamics and robustness.
Giving the teams a specific objective and criteria to work towards encouraged everyone to collaborate, think outside the box and come up with innovative solutions to the problem.
And what amazing solutions the teams came up with!
We had a Whale ( MagWhale ), Caterpillar, Rhino and a Seal lined up before the external judging panel for aesthetic and robustness and then each of these cardboard-built solutions were sent around our demonstration track for aerodynamics testing.
The winner of the competition was the Seal, but the design work, precision and ingenuity that went into building all four solutions was inspirational and motivating for the entire team.
The event was fun, was organized brilliantly, and was a huge success in achieving its objectives. The credit for designing and delivering goes to our Head of Engineering Neil Lovegrove and Product Manager Matt Bacarese-Hamilton, and it is great to see that their efforts paid off in such a big way.