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On the F1 Fast Lane with Glodi

On the F1 Fast Lane with Glodi

Meet Glodi Ben Bashala, third year DUT Industrial Engineering student who served as a mentor in the fast paced Top Gear Festival Legacy Initiative’s F1 in Schools Technology Challenge.

Bashala, who is currently serving his internship, worked as a Computer Aided Design (CAD) tutor in the University’s Industrial Engineering Department from July 2014 to May 2015. He mentored The Transformers, a team from a high school in Ntuzuma, Durban, which participated in this year’s F1 in Schools Technology Challenge at Suncoast, Golden Mile.

The F1 in Schools Technology Challenge is an initiative between Top Gear, DUT, Sangari SA, KZN Department of Education and Autodesk. The Challenge was introduced to the UK in 2000 and has expanded to over 40 countries, reaching over 20 million pupils worldwide. The project is geared towards encouraging high school pupils to pursue careers in engineering, science and technology.
The Challenge sees teams of about six pupils between grades nine and eleven designing and manufacturing miniature versions of the Formula One (F1) car of the future. The 21cm long cars are designed using Computer-Aided Design software (CAD) built from a block of balsa wood and powered by a compressed air cylinder.
The groups are then tested on marketing, team work, design, car speed, manufacturing, aerodynamics, branding as well as their ability to source sponsorship for their projects.
DUT’s Sinegugu Ndlovu caught up with Glodi two months after his mentoring stint and this is what he had to say.

Sinegugu: Who is Glodi and how did you end up being a mentor in the F1 in Schools Challenge?
Glodi: I’m from the DRC. I’m also a Project Management student at the University of South Africa (UNISA). When students from Protec Ink (Ntuzuma) needed help with CAD, the DUT Industrial Engineering HoD contacted me to help them and it was a pleasure.

Andrew Naicker
Sinegugu: What exactly did your mentoring role entail?
Glodi: I was encouraging my team, making sure they have fun while working on the F1 design. I helped them with their mistakes and made sure that they understood what they were doing and most of all, helped them work as a team. We worked in two groups. The first group was focused on designing the F1 car (including wings) in which I was the mentor and the second group was working on the portfolio in which my friend Xavier Mutakaya was mentor. This wasn’t just about helping them design the best and fast car for the F1 Challenge, it was also work on how and where they saw themselves as a group, but the bottom line is my role was to help them design a winning F1 car.

Sinegugu: What did being chosen as a mentor mean to you?
Glodi: It meant a lot to me personally and it was an honour and privilege for me to mentor the Transformers.

Sinegugu: How did the Transformers perform?
Glodi: We had a mock race at DUT and the final race at Suncoast. We came 7th out of about 12 groups on the mock race mainly because our car was heavier than our opponents’ cars. We came up with a completely new design in the final race. We mostly worked on our car’s stability and its wheel rotational speed by replacing plastic wheels with ceramic wheels. This resulted in a simpler shape and easier flow of air around the body of our car. All those changes paid off. We came second at the final race.

Sinegugu: What were some of the highlights and challenges that you and your team encountered and how did you rise above those challenges?
Glodi: Self-confidence amongst group members was low. They were scared to face groups from “big” schools mostly because they saw themselves as inferior to those groups and looked at the best in others instead of looking at the best in themselves. We worked on building their confidence by making them see that their opponents were just ordinary people and that nothing is impossible as long as we believe in ourselves, work hard towards what we needed to achieve and proclaim that we can win in the final race. I’m more than happy to tell you that we did well in the final race.

Sinegugu: Why did you choose to study Industrial Engineering? What about it interests you?
Glodi: I fell in love with it from the first time I read about it. What really fascinated me is how the course opened my mind and made me understand things that I couldn’t understand before. It made me become much more of a thinker. It gave me a critical mind and made me hungry for knowledge than ever before.

Sinegugu: Your future plans?
Glodi: I’m looking forward to getting an MBA before turning 35 and retire from industry at the age of 45 to become a lecturer at DUT or any other African university. The only way we can help Africa grow is by creating a bigger pool of educated individuals that can build it into something better than what it is right now.

Sinegugu: Your advice to future engineers and scientists?
Glodi: You only fail when you decide to give up. Dream bigger, work hard, never give up no matter how many times you fall, always challenge yourself and choose friends who will help you succeed. South Africa needs all of us to help it become an even better place.

Pictured: Glodi Ben Bashala, third year DUT Industrial Engineering student who served as a mentor in the fast paced Top Gear Festival Legacy Initiative’s F1 in Schools Technology Challenge. Also pictured is Professor Andrew Naicker from the Department of Industrial Engineering at DUT briefs pupils on the rules and regulations of designing on the 3D CAD software.

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