Team Building Engineering

Let’s build… the Team

Team Building Engineering is a simple and at the same time very efficient format. This type of activities are often used for children who need to develop design thinking and creativity. But also adults need to practice the same skills! Engineering Team Building is an activity where every participant looks like a researcher and creator. This is a ready business tool for developing communication skills. The aim? To move from private to general, from the personal to the collective, and to get a joint result.

The basic characteristics of a this teambuilding? Defining a strategy, planning the steps of work and, of course, working together. At the beginning, according to the customer’s needs, we may propose a warm-up session. It may include some problem solving activities with limited time, limited resources, a goal to be achieved or a problem to be solved. After this first step the teams will be ready to face the Engineering challenge with the given materials, that may change from occasion to occasion.

Key tasks of Engineering Team Building:

• Personal contribution (distribution of tasks, personal responsibility, identifying leadership qualities);
• Teamwork (interaction within the team, inter-team communication);
• Focus on victory (managing the resources, working for the overall result).

Team Building Engineering is born from the necessity of developing a key ability in corporate context: to face constantly new problems and challenges. Today, in a quickly developing environment, the ability of Change Management is vital for both multinational and small companies. Also, it’s not unfrequent in any company to work with partially unfitting tools and materials. Problem solving of this kind is another ability we will improve, since the project has to be delivered before knowing exactly which materials the team will have at disposal. After discovering them, participants have to adequate their project to reality!

The advantages of Engineering Team Building:

• the same interest for different target and age audiences;
• a large involvement of participants;
• minimum requirements for location and timing;
• an effect of common victory.

Which materials will we use? Our favorite is… pasta! With its many shapes and dimensions, you can use it in any way you like. And since we are living in the age of skyscrapers, we can challenge the teams to build one with their own hands. It is possibile to propose a prize for the taller building, or to the more original one.

Simplicity at the service of Team Building

Engineering Team Building has other important advantages. In the first place, it’s easily adaptable to any location. An indoor ballroom will be perfect, but we can also work outdoor on tables arranged on the lawn. On the second place, it does not require much time for preparation nor for the activity. We can arrange a challenge in just one hour, if that’s the timing our client has at disposal. Finally, engineering is also very versatile in terms of the aspects on which you want to focus. Do we want to work on team leadership and communication? Vision and business philosophy? Or do we prefer creativity as a key element for the success of your group? Whatever the priority, we can meet your needs by designing our Engineering Team Building according to your specific needs!

Team Building Engineering: the formats

There are different formats of the Engineering Team Building. However, in all of them the challenge is the same: to create a project that will reach the given goal. The object to build can relate to a symbol of the company, to a product, to values, Mission, Vision… Or other according to the customer’s need. The important thing is to work on a real object, from drawing on paper to execution and then to presentation to the other teams. Just as if it was a business project, but with an addiction of fun and originality.

Pasta Engineering

Is it possible to create a building or other architectural structures using pasta? The Pasta Engineering, also called Marshmallow Challenge if we use marshmallows to link the pieces of pasta, is an original training Team Building. Using this strage material puts the teams in particularly unusual conditions: in fact, you’d neve think of pasta as material for a building! That’s exactly the point of this teambuilding activity, focused on “out of the box” thinking and creative problem solving.

Work planning, division of tasks, participation in a shared and collective project: all these are aspects to be faced in this seemingly easy format. The activity Pasta Engineering lends itself perfectly to events with little time available. You can test it for a fun time before dinner or include in a larger and more complex Team Coaching path.

After demonstrating architectural and engineering skills, the teams will present their creation to a panel of judges. It is possibile to create competition with a prize for the best construction (the tallest, for example, or the most close to the goal that has been set at the beginning), or on the contrary to boost team spirit by giving an award to every team for a different quality (height, resistance, originality…).

Lego Engineering

What about the idea to spend a couple of hours becoming children again with Lego bricks? Not for fun of course, but for representing the company and its mission! The purpose of Lego Engineering? To create relationships between team members and direct attention to the importance of communication and collaboration in our daily professional life.

A possible task for the participants to face is to use Lego bricks to create 3D representations of corporate Mission, Vision, or Values. It may seem easy, since many of us have played with Lego in our childhood, but to elaborate a project from an idea is always a hard task. Everybody’s opinion counts, and our trainers will observe how the teams deal with communication and finding a common way to work.

We also can work on understanding, communication and leadership. In this case, teams are given more precise indications, but they are told to individuals who then try to explain the rules to their team. It’s harder than it seems to understand and remember in a really short time a list of rules. And it’s even harder to come back and try making other team members respect them.

In both cases, participants have opportunity to live some hours in Lego world, get to know each other better, spend time together. They work both on communicative and creative aspects and challenge themselves on the ability to build objects.

Catapulta Building

The construction of a catapulta involves and stimulates the imagination of participants. The teams have to lay out a project with drawings and then build their machine. Materials at disposal are ecological, recyclable and recycled: wood, cardboards, ropes. The target? To create a fully functional machine inspired by the inventions of Archimedes or Leonardo da Vinci. The difficulty is increased by the fact that until the last moment the team does not know precisely which kind of materials will be available.

To conquer these materials teams face challenges and difficulties. Only the best team can earn the materials in better conditions and build a machine that will bring them to victory!

The final act of the activity involves the launch of a ball. This test will decree the victory of one of the teams based on the distance and precision of the launch.

Hydraulic Constructions

Among our team building activities we propose a new social engineering format: Hydraulic Toys. In this format we create toys for children in difficult situations. For example? Guests of a family home or simply children from a kindergarten or school in the area!

Participants build, using all the necessary tools and respecting the safety rules, fantastic toys that are produced in 100% eco-materials as cardboard or wood. For example, it is possible to create real machines that work with the hydraulic pumps. They are interesting to design and manufacture, and fun for the children to use. At the end of the day, participants decorate the final product with creativity and imagination. The process is fully supported and followed by our experienced trainers. However, creating a toy is not simple at all.

It will be necessary:

• splitting tasks within the team;
• designing the construction;
• following the instructions.

The aim of this Team Building activity? To help children, of course, but there’s much more. Through this socially useful activity the team members will find themselves more united, conscious of doing a good job, and much more motivated to work.