Team of Eight from University of Surrey Reach the Final of the Engineers in Business Innovation Competition

On 26 October 2020 Euan Kirrage, an MEng student of Electronic Engineering with Space Systems at Surrey University, will lead an eight-strong team as they compete against nine other university teams to win a prestigious Engineers in Business Competition (EIBC) Award, a share of £10,000 and business mentoring from a Sainsbury Management Fellow.

The other seven members of the team are Naj Ali, Enis Baty, Vasily Berdnikov, Rian Flanagan, Danishan Rahulan, Evans Stathatos and Sami Zemmiri, all Electronic & Electrical Engineering undergraduates at the University of Surrey. 

The EIBC supports and promotes the idea of a combined engineering and business education and provides prize funding to universities to help them encourage more engineers and technology students/graduates to get involved in innovation and entrepreneurship. In a world that is moving and developing so rapidly, these skills are vital to help tackle challenging global problems and to improve our lives. 

This year, Euan and his team won the University of Surrey’s innovation competition and were awarded £1,500 from EIBC for creating SiteShield, a device that prevents the theft of commercial and farm vehicles. SiteShield can be fitted to vehicles to track them and allow users to set operational boundaries. The SiteShield Team then entered and won a place in the national EIBC Champion of Champions Final where they are competing for a Business Start-up Award and a further £3,000. The cash prize will go towards the ongoing development of SiteShield.

SiteShield: Guarding against the theft of plant and agricultural vehicles

SiteShield can be fitted to a range of agricultural vehicles, from tractors and telehandlers to ATVs. Once fitted, it allows users to operate the vehicle as normal, but only within a geographical boundary defined by the user. When the vehicle starts to cross this boundary, the engine is automatically cut off. One of the things that sets SiteShield apart from traditional immobilisers is that the vehicle can be easily accessed by operators on busy worksites without any additional barriers such as key codes or fobs. There is no risk of a key ever being stolen to disable the device, and built-in GPS tracking can be used to remotely determine whether the vehicle is within its boundary at any given time.

Euan explained: “Having lived rurally for most of my life, I know several people who have been affected by the theft of construction and agricultural vehicles, and I’m aware that the loss of such vehicles can have a larger impact on the owner than might be expected. For instance, having to pay for less effective equipment to temporarily fill the gap until a proper replacement can be found. I had also heard about stolen farm vehicles – particularly telehandlers – being used by criminal gangs to steal cash machines from rural areas. One particular example of this in Lowdham, close to where I lived, was one of the main sources of inspiration to create a device which could combat this problem. The purpose of SiteShield is to fight back against criminal organisations that prey on rural communities and to take away some of the risks for those who own and operate industrial vehicles.”

The Awards Presentation Ceremony – 26 October 2020

The live online dragons’ den style competition will be compered by TV presenter and engineer, Kate Bellingham. Competing against nine other teams, the SiteShield Team will have just six minutes to convince the judges, through a presentation and Q&A, that it should be crowned Champion of Champions and take home a £3,000 Business Start-up Award. Amongst other criteria, the judges will be assessing just how much of an impact SiteShield could have on its target customer, and how it will solve real problems and challenges experienced by farmers and agricultural workers.

The prestigious judging panel comprises: 

●    Ana Avaliani, Associate Director, Enterprise, Royal Academy of Engineering

●    Gareth Trainer, Chair, Enterprise Educators UK

●    Henning von Spreckelsen, Director and Investor in Plastecowood

●    Steve Cleverley, CEO, Oxentia Ltd, Global Innovation Consultancy

As an electronic engineering student who is now steeped in entrepreneurship, Euan is extremely passionate about business education for engineers and technologists. He commented:

“An undergraduate engineering course naturally provides technical knowledge and skills which are required to become an engineer, but they can’t be effectively applied without the business innovation skills that go hand-in-hand with them. Business innovation skills are required to understand what products are needed and have a chance of becoming commercially viable, and how that can be achieved. Once this is understood and an outline for the product exists, technical skills can be applied to bring it to life.”