OUR DRIVING QUESTION:
OUR DRIVING QUESTION:
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How can we, as local town planners, design a sustainable waterfront that meets the needs of the community?
Congratulations to our winning team!
Congratulations to our winning team!
Maimie, Lexii, Timmy and Jack impressed our Balfour Beatty/East Lothian Council judges with their waterfront design!
Have a look at the journey of this project below!
28/08/25
Balfour Beatty came into school to introduce our S1 students to their business and also pose a challenge about the old Cockenzie Power Station site.
03/09/25
As part of our exploration of the waterfront area that we are looking to develop, the students visited the site and were given a tour by Balfour Beatty engineers and East Lothian Council staff. They were able to see the live demolition work going on to improve the road access to the power station site and asked excellent questions to broaden their understanding of the process.
Many students asked how they could work for Balfour Beatty in the future and become engineers!
The students are now able to better visualise how they'd like to develop this area in their teams.
08/09/25
Our classes are interested in how the animals using the land at the waterfront would be affected if we develop the area into a community space. We brought in an ecologist to talk to the students about what wildlife is present in our local area, how their habitats are affected by construction work, and how we can be mindful of the ecology of our area when planning for development work. They explored ways to preserve habitats and also how we can create spaces and buildings to actively encourage biodiversity.
Have a look at this video to see some ideas for creating community spaces that are wildlife friendly!
17/09/25
Our classes have now turned their attentions to how to construct and build their waterfront designs. To support this, a civil engineering expert from Balfour Beatty came in to classes to let students have a go at using a piece of equipment that is key to this work when creating a building site ready to use. They learned all about how and why we use Dumpy Levels and students were able to practice themselves too. Have a look at this video to learn more about using a Dumpy Level and photos of the students getting involved are below.
01/10/25
The creation of scale plans for our waterfront ideas is well underway so our Balfour Beatty partners have come back for a visit to give some constructive feedback to our groups before they build their final models.
Some feedback was:
To think about how the businesses will run and consider if any will be social enterprise.
Consider transport links and accessibility features to ensure that all the community feel involved.
08/10/25
Our students have worked fantastically hard in their teams to collaborate on the design build and adapt their designs to take on board feedback from students, teachers and visitors.
Each group presented their design and plans to their class and a judge from our Home Room team. All students did an excellent job explaining why they had made certain choices and how they thought that their ideas were best suited to the waterfront.
One finalist from each class was chosen and presented again in the final to Eliza Butter from Balfour Beatty and Graeme Marsden from East Lothian Council Planning Team.
Congratulations to Maimie, Lexii, Timmy and Jack for their winning design!
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