At the Awards and Presentation Day on Monday March 22nd, Bauhinia, Fion, Amélie and Megan were delighted to win the Airbus UK Award, worth £500, for ’The most innovative or adapted design’. The girls worked with Alcatel-Lucent and designed a new method to enable SARA (Severn Area Rescue Association), our local lifeboat organisation, to launch their smallest lifeboat, SARA 5, into the river or canal where no slipway exists. The team came up with inventive ideas and after considering all the pros and cons, developed a design for a trailer that tilts and inflates a portable slipway/ ramp (similar to the emergency exit system used by airlines), down which the lifeboat will slip into the water. The system was designed to be low maintenance and easy to operate, to match the needs of the client.
Model of new trailer and launch ramp
