Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Her eight week project was carried out for TECmark Ltd, a St John’s Innovation Centre based company, which is involved in the development of hygiene products.

Amanda’s project was to produce a novel oil-in-water hand disinfectant from an in-house discovery made in 1998. Using her chemistry and some creative arts skills, Amanda not only succeeded in making the breakthrough, but opened up a novel production method producing three components in one process.

She found time to research production scale-up costs, the routes to market and potential customers and also calculated accurately the manufacturing unit costs of the products generated.

Dr Harley Farmer, MD of TECmark who evaluated her work, said: “Amanda has advanced us from a theoretical concept to a saleable product in less than two months - an amazing achievement for any project.

“She was receptive to the rapid changes in mental direction and the fact that several new objectives were introduced.

“The project simply could not have been started without STEP. The benefits to the company are far reaching; not only will we be able to enter several new global markets but also we can save significant sums of money by reducing material and shipping costs.”

The Best IT prize was won by James Doig, a second year student reading natural sciences at Cambridge University. Placed with Walden Precision Apparatus in Linton, he successfully completed seven projects and vastly improved the company’s management information system.

Peter Watson. MD of WPA said: “Overall we have been very impressed with the calibre of James. He has added a lot of value in his brief secondment. We now have a real-time system which should help boost sales.”

Duncan Sconce, a second year mechanical engineering student from the University of Sheffield, won the Best Engineering Project. Duncan was placed with Swift Technologies Limited, a highly focused materials technology company based in March.

“Duncan, successfully carried out two major projects,” said Paul Shepheard, his manager. “The company has now achieved a vital proof of principle solution to a very thorny material quality issue and we now have a solution which can be developed into a production system to ensure the in-house control of our materials.

“Duncan exceeded our expectations of what we thought would be achieved by the STEP project.”

All the students had been participating in The Shell Technology Enterprise Programme run locally by St John’s Innovation Centre and supported in 2001 by Cambridgeshire Business Services, which delivers Business Link services in the Cambridgeshire region.

Nationally, it is planned for STEP to develop into a Business Link service delivered by agencies around the country, such as St John’s Innovation Centre.

While most of the students will take a well-earned rest, Robert Frazier based with Imp Electronics in Huntingdon, must soldier on. He only began his placement at the end of July to meet the company’s preferred timescale and will be carrying out detailed studies and defining the essential electronic engineering elements relevant to products designed and manufactured by IMP.

The STEP scheme was set up 15 years ago by Shell UK and has been running in Cambridge for the past eight years. As part of the scheme, penultimate year students undertake eight-week placements in local, usually technology-based, small businesses, or they can undertake international, community or environmental placements.

At the end of their placements, the UK based students are asked to write a report and each must give a presentation in front of a panel of judges, detailing their project experiences. Some 1500 students are placed each year by agencies throughout the UK.

Judges for the 2001 Local Final, were, PR specialist Lindy Beveridge, Dr Tim Minshall of the University of Cambridge Entrepreneurship Centre and Peter Hornby, a consultant to St John’s Innovation Centre.