NICHOLAS Fauvergue has won ICE Scotland’s Pitch 200 award after using a chocolate dessert to demonstrate the different components of bitumen pavement.
The competition asked civil engineers to demonstrate an aspect of their work to increase public awareness of the critical jobs they do and inspire the next generation of industry workers.
Submissions were shortlisted to a final three, with Peter Robinson, head of engineering at Scottish Canals presenting the concept of ‘Sponge Cities’ a scalable approach contributing to better water management and Louise Smith, director of Caithness Renewables Ltd, describing the complexities of our bridges and what goes into building them.
32-year-old Nicolas was born in the south of France and graduated from the University of Grenoble with a Masters of Civil Engineering in 2015. He moved to Scotland and after completing a Civil Engineering Post-Graduate degree in 2018 at the University of Strathclyde, joined the Glasgow Highways Team at WSP as a graduate engineer.
He initially mainly worked on road drainage design for a portion of the A9 dualling scheme and then got seconded to Scotland TranServ where he gained experience in road cyclic maintenance design for the South West Scotland network. It was here he got the idea for the road pavement as a multi-layered chocolate treat.
Nicolas explained, “I am delighted to have won the competition and enjoyed sharing what engineers do in a fun format! For this event, I took inspiration into what attracted me to engineering when I was younger and how it was presented to me at that time.
“Pitch 200 is a great example of how we can explain our works in a simple and fun way. Promoting engineering in a simple manner is the best way to explain it to the general public and attract talented young people in the industry.”
ICE Scotland director Hannah Smith added, “All the entries this year were of the highest standard but clearly Nicolas satisfied a hunger for engineering knowledge. Civil engineering is a hugely exciting profession and I’m sure Nicolas has inspired many people to get involved.”
