Teams from McDermott, Fluor, Wood & Worley were the prize winners at the 4th Virtual ECITB ACTIVE Cup delivered by Cranfield University’s School of Management. Fluor took the prestigious winning place in the closely fought online project management competition.
The winning team from Fluor celebrate their ACTIVE Cup victory
The ACTIVE cup sees teams of five contenders representing major engineering construction employers put their project management skills to the test, overseeing a simulated construction project. The teams from Fluor, Wood & McDermott shared the top prizes while the team from Fluor took the most improved accolade for their excellent performance.
This year’s scenario challenged the contenders to deliver a high-tech environmental monitoring centre along an industrialised stretch of South American river to a fixed price, negotiating loans and working under intense time pressure.
Due to Covid-19, the competition was again online with teams participating from all over the country to take the coveted trophy back to their companies. This presented different challenges but demonstrated even greater collaboration between the teams during the 4.5 days of delivery and competition.
Chris Claydon, Chief Executive of the ECITB, said: “Congratulations to the winning team from Fluor. I know first-hand that the ACTIVE Cup is highly prized by industry and the event is always friendly but keenly competitive.
“Project management is fundamental to effective delivery of engineering construction industry projects. This programme gives the teams experience of that high pressure environment in less than a week of immersive training activity. By learning how to forecast completion dates and project costs is the teams learn more about what keeps a project on track and how to make contingencies.”
Laura Pearse, Fluor’s UK Talent Lead, said: “The competition provides a valuable opportunity to work across the whole project lifecycle and collaborate as a team. The Fluor team showed how they could adapt and deliver in a time pressured environment and winning is a great achievement!”
Organised by the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB), the ACTIVE Cup is run in collaboration with and hosted by Cranfield School of Management. Now in its 28th year, the ACTIVE Cup is just part of the ECITB’s wider project management training programmes aimed at raising skill levels within the engineering construction industry.
Dawn Thompson, ECITB Senior Account Manager, said: “Running a project is not for everybody, but everybody should understand how a project is run, and that is what the ACTIVE Cup teaches industry.
“Our companies tell us this is one of the best ways of developing their staff – some even have it written into their training plan for staff for their graduate employees. With so many glass trophies in board rooms around the country, combined with the fact that some companies having won the ACTIVE Cup nine or ten times, there’s always plenty of competition.”
