An Innovative Corporate Culture

One of our core values at Deighton is to establish a collaborative, respectful, and innovative corporate culture. To develop solutions, like dTIMS, we hire creative and innovative thinkers. We encourage collaboration and continuous learning practices, so team members feel empowered and inspired to meet Deighton’s high standards. A vital component of this culture is the dTIMS Challenge. The goal is to make Deighton employees more aware of the assets that our clients manage within dTIMS and to promote the use of teamwork by combining employees from different departments, with different skills and abilities toward a common goal.

The dTIMS Bridge Challenge Rules

Leading the dTIMS Challenge is our VP Engineering, Dr. Alfred Weninger. In our last challenge teams were tasked with building a Bridge. The bridge was to be built using only 8 ½ ” x 11” (20 lbs / 75 g/m2) copier paper and white glue (C4H6O2) as resources. The bridge needed to meet the following specifications: span a 1.0m gap, support its own weight, give passage to a Lego vehicle and be subjected to a load applied to its midspan. The criteria for evaluation included:

Design – did this thing look like a bridge and could the Lego truck traverse the gap?
Construction – from a static point of view, how realistic was the solution?
Materials – were any materials outside the list used?
Sustainability – in the real world, how could such a bridge be sustained over its lifecycle?
Load to weight ratio at failure – an indication of both strength and economy?

Evaluation criteria for presentation and engineering were added to recognize the effort some teams put into the bridge presentation and the disproportion of Engineers and Ph.D.’s on one of the teams. At stake, (or should I say steak) was a fully paid dinner for the winning team at a local steakhouse. The final results have been tallied, and considered final, by a panel of impartial judges and will be announced at the next Deighton Townhall meeting.

Three Teams Competed

The teams involved in the Bridge Challenge included:

Whitby Team 1- Vincent, Vicki, Craig W, Robert D, Menan, Jina, Aaron W, Aaron W, Travis, Kevin, Vesakha, Scott, Dave, Deepti

Whitby Team 2 - Anthony, Brock, Bruce, Jeff, Cody, Cory Joel, Navya, Chris, Mark, Gary, Jeff, Jonathan, Matt

Vienna Team - Barbara B, Petra, Jan, Anna, Barbara K, Nick

Action shots during the building and testing clearly show that the goal of team building was achieved and the resulting submissions, that understandably varied in terms of aesthetics, economy and load carrying capacities, did all look as if something beyond Grade 2 Cut and Paste was learned.

The Results

The load/deflection results to failure were as follows:

The Load/Deflection chart comparing the three bridges

Lessons Learned

The physical results showed both structural and serviceability failures, as shown.

Classic Structural Failures at Joints and Struts

Serviceability Failure with Lateral Distortion Typical of Slender Structures

Thank you to all competitors. We hope you had fun and have a better appreciation of bridge assets and their complexity. Stay tuned for out next dTIMS Challenge!