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Students, aged 11-14, from 15 different schools from around the UK - ranging from Dorset to Sussex have signed up to participate in this year’s challenge. They have been busy designing and building their powerboats since Christmas and more recently, our QinetiQ STEM ambassadors have been visiting the teams to give them advice and share their knowledge.

With the powerboats built and tested, the students will bring their creations to the Ocean Basin at our Haslar site for a day of racing on 29 June. We are delighted to have the event supported by a number of prestigious organisations, including: the Royal Navy (RN); Royal Institute of Naval Architects (RINA); Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST); and the Smallpeice Trust. We are also looking forward to welcoming back a former member of QinetiQ, Sarah Kenny, CEO of BMT.

The event is being organised by graduates and senior Maritime Land and Weapons stakeholders and we are proud to continually enable this opportunity to introduce STEM to young people. This event has consistently proven to be an excellent outlet to promote our world class Test & Evaluation facility at Haslar and is also a great example of how we are fulfilling our role as a Year of Engineering partner. This year-long government-led campaign is all about encouraging industry partners to tackle the engineering skills gap and widen the pool of young people who join the profession. The School’s Powerboat Challenge is designed to raise awareness amongst younger audiences of their natural aptitudes and abilities in engineering from building a model boat to helping them see they are part of the UK’s future engineering skills requirement.

To follow along on the day, look for #PowerboatChallenge on social media.

For more information or any queries regarding the event, you can contact the team at powerboatchallenge@qinetiq.com.