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Teams of young engineers from Hong Kong dominated the final rounds of this year's MERIT competition, the annual construction business game supported by ICE.
The winners were the 'Synergy' team from Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway, made up of Gordon Kwok, Dickie Chan, Henry Lam, Ellen Wong, Davy Chan and Dave Cheung. Lying second in the penultimate round in the final, they produced a final surge to overtake their colleagues from MTR's team 'Professional Passionate Engineers' to end in the top spot.
After the early competition where 90 teams from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa, the USA and the Netherlands competed against a computer simulation, the top six met at Loughborough University to play out a two-day final, competing against each other as well as the computer . 'Synergy' came into the Final in third position and progressed through the final eight rounds showing an improvement in performance in each round, the only team to do so. Last year an MTR team was overtaken in the last round by an ARUP team, this year an MTR team was again overtaken in the last round but this time by another MTR team! This is the first time a winner has come from Hong Kong in MERIT's twenty four competitions. Three of the teams in the final were from Hong Kong and 16 staff from Hong Kong attended the Final giving Hong Kong its best chance to produce a MERIT Champion - and they did!
This was a high scoring game with high performances from all finalists; even the team finishing in sixth place recorded a score that would in some years have been a winning score. MTR finished first and second, the other places in the final were: Mott MacDonald's 'Buckingham Palace'; Atkins Hong Kong's 'Prevail', Arup's 'AgRUP of MEN' and Arup's 'It's all Ova now'
The ICE winner's inscribed Silver Salver was presented by David Kyte, Chair of the ICE Management Board. The winners and runners up also received a cash prize donated by CIOB and CITB.
MERIT requires the teams to take decisions on managing their simulated construction company from staffing head office, estimating, bidding, staffing projects and managing cash, company capital, investments and profit distribution. MERIT introduces young professional engineers with a predominately technical education and training to company, business and financial management. The teams that do well and reach the final are those that have the most diligent decision making processes and clear leadership in their team.
Many of the big sponsors of MERIT have built the MERIT training experience into their staff development programmes.With MTR teams finishing first and second this year and finishing second and third last year, it is worth considering what has produced this remarkable performance. The answer may lie in the rigorous process that MTR have to select the staff that they will sponsor to take part in MERIT. Each aspirant MERIT participant in MTR has to write a case as to how it will benefit them and what they will contribute to the competition. This means that MTR staff thinks about MERIT long before the competition starts.
Another of the international companies using MERIT in their staff development is AURECON of Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa. AURECON regularly enter ten teams staffed from different offices to improve dialogue between offices. Although previous finalists and winners of the sponsors awrd none of the AURECON teams reached the final this year, but AURECON also run an internal final for their ten teams, so there will be an AURECON 'internal Champion'!.
The other big MERIT prize is the Sponsors Award competed for by sponsors who have entered three or more teams. This year's winner was Mott MacDonald bringing their total of MERIT Sponsors Awards to three, the last onewas won in 2006. The inscribed Sponsors Award Silver Plate was presented to Andy Thomas of Mott MacDonald by Mick Guy of CITB.
Next year's MERIT will be the 25th and the ICE Management Board are planning an event to celebrate the success of this training vehicle which has been experienced by some 25,000 young staff and accounting for an estimated 40,000 CPD training days.
