In the future, Sydney may condense water from the air, use Big Data to reduce traffic congestion and create new public spaces by erecting prefabricated structures above the rail corridors. These are just some of the ideas devised by the city’s young professionals as part of the Smart Seeds innovation challenge.
Smart Seeds brings together young professionals from leading public and private sector organisations who work together in teams to develop creative concepts to solve real urban development challenges. Each team has an experienced mentor from one of the participating organisations to assist with the innovation process.
At the Smart Seeds Showcase, the teams pitched their final concepts to a panel of judges and an audience of more than 100 industry representatives. Lifestyle or Luxury, a proposal for affordable prefabricated micro-apartment pods was selected as the winner by a judging panel made up of senior industry leaders. The audience voted the people’s choice award to Uptrack, a concept to “stitch communities back together” by using lightweight platforms to create local social spaces above the rail corridor.
Along the journey to the Showcase event, participants developed innovation, presentation and teamwork skills, strengthened their professional networks, learned from mentors and each other, and got a buzz from creating and sharing new ideas. Some of the concepts may go on to be adopted by a sponsoring organisation to create a more liveable and sustainable future for Sydney.
The participants received valuable feedback from a panel of high-profile judges: Tim Reardon (Acting Secretary, Transport for NSW), Chris Brown (General Manager of Lendlease Building Retail Business Unit), Lucy Turnbull AO, (Chair, Committee for Sydney), Professor Peter Phibbs (University of Sydney) and Stephen Durkin (CEO of Engineers Australia).
Smart Seeds is an industry-led program managed by GHD. The NSW participating organisations include Transport for NSW as the gold regional supporter and Lendlease as the silver regional supporter as well as UrbanGrowth NSW, Veolia, IBM, Sydney Water and Ernst & Young.
Jeremy Stone, Group Manager Innovation at GHD, says, “Smart Seeds has grown out of an internal innovation initiative at GHD into an event for the entire infrastructure industry. There is an increasing need for young professionals to learn innovation skills and collaborate to solve increasingly complex and interconnected urban infrastructure challenges. Participants use GHD‘s innovation framework, which is regularly applied on projects and in organisations, to develop and refine their ideas.”
This year is the first time that Smart Seeds is running on a national level, with innovation challenges in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Next year will mark another exciting step as Smart Seeds goes global.
The 2015 Major Supporters are GHD, Engineers Australia, Bentley Systems and Innovation Interchange.
Photo: FoodCycle Team at Smart Seeds - Monique Roser (mentor from GHD), Gareth Williams (UrbanGrowth NSW), Hannah Norris (Veolia), Sarah Raymont (GHD), Richard Hodgkinson (Lendlease), Ling Lim (GHD) and Shaun Rainford (mentor from Veolia).
This article has been posted by Engineers Australia Sydney Division. For enquiries please email EA Sydney.