A Hands-on PROJECT - Water Bottle Irrigation System
During Spring 2017, I was assigned to work on a project in a team that consists of six members. Our team was tasked to develop a design and prototype irrigation system for crops in Africa by utilizing the plastic in Africa and recycle it.
Our team worked hard on developing a design that is efficient, yet cheap in price. Therefore, nothing beats recycling plastic as it is not only cheaper in price. In fact, it is very environment friendly.
Album 1. Shows current techniques used by farmers for irrigation.
By doing so, our team hopes that our project will add to the efforts placed to face the threats on the world's water supply, and the design will improve the lives of many farmers across Africa.
Our research on the design focused Moringa farms. Moringa, is a tree that is native to parts of Africa and Asia, is the sole genus in the flowering plant family Moringaceae. A research was conducted about the amount of water is needed by the system to irrigate the Moringa tree and the distances between the plants.
The team studied different irrigation systems. After data collection, brainstorming meetings between the team were organized. Team members shared different designs for irrigation system and sketches. Then I worked on developing a CAD design for the team. Finally the team designed a prototype for testing.
Album 2. The process of our design. First ideas, sketches, CAD design, tested prototype.
Throughout Spring 2017 the students in ENGR 408 at Pennsylvania State University were introduced to different leadership principles by different established leaders supporting the Engineering Leadership Program.
In the project the leader position was switched between the teammates weekly. The leaders had to know the difference between leaders Vs. managers, in witch leadership is associated with taking an organization into the future, by finding and utilizing new opportunities.
Next, the team members were introduced to concepts that helped in improving the personal profile and the team foundations, such as project management, leading and motivating teams, creativity and problem solving, emotional Intelligence and conflict resolution, leading across generations and cultures, and engineering ethics in order to have a strong structure for the rest of the class.
The team worked really hard on this system and designed the following poster please refer to it for extra info.
Overall, working on this project gave me a hands-on experience with a real world problem while applying all of those leadership principles. I learned how can team work cab be efficient and how much it can be improved. This experience defiantly enriched my understanding of leadership and shaped my skills to be a professional leader.