Picture from GURE
1) Sponsorship
We are very excited to announce that our silver sponsor has been confirmed: Murphy; a leading global, specialist engineering and construction company. CivSoc cannot wait to be working with Murphy for the rest of the coming year!
2) Membership
This year, CivSoc welcomed 105 new members, including 70 first years and 21 second years, a CivSoc record.
3) New website
This year we created a new website to make events easier to book for our members, improve our online presence and create a formal record of everything we are doing. Since the website was launched, it has had over 660 site sessions and 350 unique visitors. Visits have shown clear spikes just before socials and recruitment events, noting spikes on the 29th September the day before the first social, the 7th October, the day of our first coffee morning, and the day both GURE and our first family social were announced, and 12th October when tickets were released for the CivSoc winter Ball.
4) Industry Events
GURE
On the 19th of October, we ran our annual Graduate and Undergraduate Recruitment Evening (GURE) for current civil engineering students. The event is intended to bring engineering companies and students together so that the companies can promote themselves and their early career opportunities and students can engage with industry professionals in a familiar environment and ask any careers related questions they may have. The evening consisted of concise 5-minute presentations from each company followed by a networking session where the speakers and students could engage and connect with one another. Refreshments were provided during this part of the evening.
We had over 110 attendees and guest speakers from 12 companies (15 were due to attend originally but three companies had to pull out at the last minute due to personal circumstances), making GURE 2021 the best-attended industry event in our society’s history. We also live-streamed the first half of the event on Zoom so that those students unable to attend the event in person could still watch the presentations virtually.
Our industry representatives began contacting and sending out invites to companies during the summer break and then spent several months planning the event; confirming attendees, ensuring our speakers understood the intended outcomes of the event, publicizing the event amongst students, organizing the logistics (room booking, catering, technology etc).
Whilst we received lots of positive verbal feedback on the evening, since the event we have sent out a Google form to each company in order to receive more formal feedback so that we can continue to improve the event for both our guests and students. This short questionnaire included two questions regarding the companies’ interest in future collaboration with CivSoc, either through a similar networking event or a lunchtime talk etc. We also advertised our sponsorship packages to the companies that attended to encourage future long-term partnerships between ourselves and industry.
Red Bull Event
This event was run in collaboration with AeroSoc, MechSoc, EngDesSoc and MechElecSoc as well as Red Bull. This event helped us improve our relationships with the internal engineering societies at the University of Bristol.
The event was called “Red Bull Basement” which was a workshop where students can learn about (and participate in!) the Red Bull Basement competition and develop and pitch a product to aid in the sustainability of different sectors covered by the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals. There were also talks held on sustainability which helped the students think about innovation in renewable energy.
5) Socials
Coffee morning
On the 7th October 2021, we ran a sober social in the form of a coffee morning where we offered a free drink, from the new senate-house café at the University of Bristol, to any member of the society who came. This event was a success with around 30 members turning up for a drink and a catch-up.
From the feedback given to us by our members who attended:
- 90% average rating
- 95% would attend again
Our action points from the event are:
1. Run coffee meetup every other week
2. If budget allows, provide snacks with the drinks
World Food Day
We started our world food day social by sorting all our new members into a family. The family scheme is something that is ingrained within our society and is where we split our members into 5 families which range through all year groups and provide a support network for members. Sorting first years into their families went well with a turnout of at least 30 first years. Allowing them to chat to their families as they were sorted into them worked nicely and we then had a member from each family come and collect them to ensure they got to their family house ok for the next part of the social.
Each family has a family host which cooked a meal. These meals were then split between families so our members could try 5 different types of international food; homemade spring rolls, dahl curry, vegetarian spaghetti bolognese, burgers and creamy pasta. In total, we had 75 people across the 5 houses. This social, like the coffee morning social, was a sober social.
From the feedback given to us by our members who attended:
- 80% average rating
- 100% would attend again
- Really welcome families, friendly environment, loved the variety of food
Our action points from the event are:
1. Clearer communication to family hosts
2. Ensure enough food for members
3. Incorporate activities such as ice-breaking games
Reinstating TUBES netball
We realized that there was no TUBES (the university of Bristol engineering society) netball anymore which we felt was a shame as it was the main sport which our female members liked to be involved with so we decided to set this back up again. We also acknowledged that it would be better to do it as an engineering team rather than just civil engineers as a way for our CivSoc members to meet other engineers. To do this we reached out to all the other engineering societies to advertise the event and then set up a meeting to vote in a captain and vice-captain of the TUBES netball team who would then, with our support, form and enter an engineering netball team into Sunday intermural matches. We have now voted in a captain and a vice-captain and a TUBES team has been entered into intermural netball so our members have the option of playing netball every Sunday as both a social activity and a way to relax and switch off.
Pub night
Turn out of around 50 people, with everyone who attended wearing hi-vis so you definitely could not miss us at the pub!
Halloween social
We started our Halloween social at our family houses and each family had a different Halloween character to dress up as. Based on the feedback from the world food day social (our first family social) we made sure to organize some games with different houses opting for Halloween quizzes to personal statement cliches. We had a really good turnout again for this social with around 75 people in total attending with around 15 in each family.
Please download the attached file to see the full monthly report for October.
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