Cool Ideas for Better HDB Living 2012 Competition

On 31st March 2012, 5 Year 2 and 3 SEG students from DIOM (Ng Joon Kiat, Tan Chyong Qing Daryl, Pow Liang Wei, Keeran Jayaravin, Tan Fang Tian) spent their precious Saturday to represent RP in a competition entitled “Cools Ideas for Better HDB Living 2012” at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). This competition is jointly organized by the Housing Development Board (HDB) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME-NTU Section) with the main objective of soliciting innovative ideas that can help to solve some of the problems commonly faced by our HDB residents.   

A total of 17 teams from the various Junior Colleges (JCs) and Polytechnics participated in this competition. Each team was required to choose one out of three problem statements to work on, which were released only one day before the actual competition day itself. The teams were then given only 3.5 hours on the actual day to brainstorm, research, discuss, and firm up their ideas, after which they had to present their proposal right away to the judging panel. (Yes, pretty much like our PBL in RP! haha…)

Our RP Team attempted to address the bicycle theft issue that many HDB residents face these days, which resulted in many of them taking the trouble to stow their bicycles at home or along corridors, causing nuisance and irritations to other residents. I am pleased to share that our RP team had managed to impress the judges with their concept of “Bicycle Pods” specially designed to provide a more secure bicycle parking facility for HDB residents. The team was selected as one of the top 10 teams with the most innovative ideas. For that, our students won a cash prize of $500!

 Students brainstorming for ideas…

Our SEG students receiving their $500 cash prize from Mr Lee Yi Shyan,

Minister of State for National Development and Trade & Industry

Group Photo with the Minister of State, Mr Lee Yi Shyan

On 21 July 2012, all the 9 teams (1 team had withdrawn) gathered again at HDB Centre of Building Research to present their completed prototypes to the panel of judges for assessment. During this assessment, our RP team presented a 5-minutes video and gave a detailed explanation to the judges on how their prototype works, as well as their design considerations, its related features and benefits. This constituted 70% of the total score. The remaining 30% will then come from the Facebook Online voting.

 

RP Team presenting their “Bicycle Pod” prototype to the judges at HDB Centre for Building Research on 21 July 2012.

Even though our RP team students had done their very best to demonstrate and “sell” their prototype to the judges, the team unfortunately only managed to attain the 4th highest total votes from the Facebook Online Voting portion, and did not managed to squeeze into the top 3 eventually. The competition finally ended on 18 August 2012 at HDB Hub where the prizes were being presented to the top 3 winning teams (TP, SP & AJC respectively).

Overall, this competition has been an eye-opener and a very good learning experience for our five DIOM students - Ng Joon Kiat, Tan Chyong Qing Daryl, Pow Liang Wei, Keeran Jayaravin, Tan Fang Tian. We are all proud of their good efforts and very happy for the team to have gone so far in the competition, despite the fact that this is the first time that they have participated in such a competition at the national level.

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