In March 2021, I, together with 4 other selected students from my faculty, entered the Fleetwood Challenge Cup competition; a national design team-based challenge aimed at discovering the next generation of young environmental design experts to drive the industry into an innovative future.

Working on the competition came with several challenges. I was immediately confronted by having to work effectively on a largely creative endeavor with a team across the faculty of science and built environment that consisted of student architects, construction managers, and building performance professionals.

While the competition brief itself was challenging as well but excitingly, the experience was the first time I had directly participated in a cross-discipline design proposal. Away from my previous experiences of all-architect creative teams and architect-led project teams, I needed to develop my team-rallying skills, understanding out-of-discipline knowledge, and professional communication skills with other disciplines within the team.

To achieve these, I met each member of the team one-on-one at different times and had honest conversations about my vantage point. In turn, they pledged to help me with parts of their discipline that I was not exposed to and this greatly improved my ability to feel part of the team.

When the time came for the selection of a team leader, team members were not forthcoming and admitted to being scared off by the responsibilities that came with the position. Having held a few leadership positions before, I knew what was required and was willing to carry them. I again volunteered to be team lead.

Consequently, I, the youngest student on the team, took on the position of team leader. I knew from previous experience that frequent informal communication consecrated via mail was key. I set the tone and encouraged this by creating a Whatsapp group where team members could drop their two cents at any time and invite each other for drinks etc.

As the team leader, I was able to positively influence the team’s mindset, and they all were astonished at the level of organization I had planned out for the team. I was successfully able to create a consistency that ensured all our drawings and text were ready a few days before the submission, this was done deliberately to give us more time to effectively make a final correction and properly fine-tune the project.

I also foresaw the possibility of team members defaulting and our trajectory timewise made it easy for me to incorporate contingency plans by seamlessly redividing leftover work amongst team members who I observed to be more enthusiastic about the project.

Together with the more capable members of the team, I also handled our correspondence to the national organizing committee.

The Fleetwood design competition will remain a high point during my Master’s degree program at Deakin University, even though there were low times during studio critique sessions from tutors, I was quick to use my infectious smile to keep a positive work spirit amongst all odds, rally the team by pointing out the praises we received and explained that the criticisms were means to rouse our ingenuity.

This eventually paid off as I was able to build a formidable team who all got higher distinctions in the unit and got a good recommendation from all tutors who contributed to the design process. We also recently got the news that we were one made the top four finalists from over 100 students from 26 universities who applied.