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Judith Phiri
Cyrene High School scooped first place at the Zimbabwe Institution of Engineers (ZIE) Bridge Building Competition in Bulawayo on Saturday at Girls’ College.
The school came first place in a competition that featured 10 schools with Milton High School taking second place and Sizane High School third place while also winning the aesthetics prize.
Others schools that participated were Christian Brothers College (CBC), St. Bernard’s High School, Petra College Senior, St Augustine College, Girls’ College, Mpopoma High School and Morningstar Christian Academy.
The competition, a high-impact initiative, spearheaded by ZIE serves as a strategic platform for cultivating early-stage engineering talent and fostering innovation among local schools. National University of Science and
Technology (NUST) Department of Civil and Water Engineering also came in to mentor the participating students.
In an interview, Cyrene High School educator, Ms Charlotte Moyo expressed enthusiasm in the students winning.
“We are happy because the boys did well. This is our third time participating at the competition and we have not been winning but we are very happy and excited to finally win this year,” she said.
The team leader for the Cyrene High School students, Mr Brazel Ncube in form 6, said collaboration and planning played a key role for the success of their model.
ZIE Bulawayo Chapter chairperson of Competitions and Training, Engineer Dumani Gwetu said the competition was critical to ensure students consider and start entertaining the ideas sa well as the concept of taking engineering as a career.
“These are the people who eventually are getting ready to go to colleges and engineering is offered there. We want them to state entertaining the idea that engineering is an option. Engineering as an option has got areas of interest and we are teaching them this young that in engineering you deal with designs,” he said.
“Engineering is about looking for solutions and finding solutions to problems through coming up with a design. So we are cultivating in them that skill of finding solutions to situations which is in this case culminates into design of a design of a bridge.”
He said they were also developing young minds that have analytic skills because they were not just building bridges but analysing to say what shape they can adopt to come up with the best or the strongest bridge.
NUST Department of Civil and Water Engineering chairperson, Engineer Felix Mudhindi who is also a board member of ZIE, said the yearly event was key to catching the youngsters at an early stagee into the engineering education.
“We are inspiring and motivating the students into engineering education. As Department of Civil and Water Engineering this is our area, when they come to NUST they are going to be learning about designing and construction of bridges, so we are introducing this area at this early stage. We are here to mentor them and to ignite the passion for civil engineering,” he said.
He said NUST and their Department’s hands-on engagement reflects a deliberate institutional commitment to experiential learning and long-term capacity building within the engineering pipeline.
Eng Mudhindi said by bridging theoretical knowledge with practical application, NUST was not only enhancing student competencies but also reinforcing the relevance of STEM education in addressing real-world infrastructure challenges.
Host school, Girls’ College educator, Ms Sihle Samantha Gumbo said they were happy to host the competition for the second time.
“The students make a model of a bridge which is part of civil engineering and are exposing the children to the world of civil engineering. Each team has three students so they built their model bridges in five hours and then we got tested to see which bridge hold the most weights,” she said.
“The importance of catching the students young is that we avoid them ending up being stuck in careers that they do not like and also just to avoid them thinking that mathematics or physics is boring or difficult. The skills they are using here are from mathematics and physics.”
She said exposing the students to the practical world of what it will look like out there, it gives them goals and pushes them to have an idea of the importance of what they are taught in class.
Online Reporter