This year's Baja competition at Gerotek saw 15 companies represented by a total of 26 engineers who acted as design judges at this year's event. ESTEQ is responsible for the judging part of the event and asks engineers from their client base to assist in evaluating the Design reports, Costs reports, Safety aspects and then finally the Static Design Judging on the second day of the competition.
The 15 companies represented at the event for the Design Judging was:
- BAE Gear Ratio
- Denel Aerostructures
- Denel Land Systems
- Drytech International
- ERGOTECH
- Eskom
- ESTEQ
- Gerotek
- Investmech
- Joest
- Paramount
- SIEMAG TECBERG
- TENOVA
- Toyota SA Motors
- Transnet
The static judging is divided into 7 categories from which the judges could pick one category: Serviceability, Ergonomics, Structural Integrity, Marketability, Feasibility of Mass Production or Powertrain.
This year, Ergotech, who specializes in ergonomics studies, were solely responsible for the Ergonomics category and could advise students in a professional manner on the layout of the driver cabin and what could/should be improved.
In a similar manner, the judges would pick a category they felt most comfortable in judging.
Just as a balance score card, the judges also had to reveal at which universities they obtained their qualifications which produced the following interesting list of universities:
SUN(3), TUT(1), UJ(3), UKZN (1), Amsterdam (1), UP(11) and WITS(3).
It was no surprise that most of the engineers previously studied at UP purely based on its location, the number of engineers finishing at UP every year and its long history of producing the highest number of engineers in South Africa.
But, when asked which entered car they would likely buy or purchase the rights for mass production for, the majority picked NWU 4 (North West University), with PUNE 16 in second place.
ESTEQ is proud to say that it was clear from the scores that the judges did not favour any university based on where they themselves studied, but used their professional judgement to evaluate the cars and give the students objective feedback.
If you are willing to be a judge in next year's event (and not affiliated to or sponsoring any of the participating teams), then please let us know.
We are looking forward to next year!
