Partner Article

University's business plans impress Faithful+Gould

The School of the Built Environment at Northumbria University recently held its first ever business plan competition, which was sponsored by the Newcastle office of international project managers and cost consultants, Faithful+Gould.

The competition teaches students to apply theoretical knowledge to real life working situations and enables them to reach out to the commercial sector by giving them a taste of planning a new business.

A total of 46 groups entered the competition and were all put through their paces once their business plans were drawn up. Five plans were then selected from the preliminary rounds of judging with the groups then going on to present their business ideas to lecturers and university representatives. During the final stages of judging, the five groups presented their business idea to a panel of built environment experts from Faithful+Gould.

The winning prize went to the team ‘Building Futures’ for its convenient and ground breaking solution to the problem of matching employable built environment students with potential employees through a magazine. Ashley Brockbank, Chris Evans, Jonathan Hendry, Anthony Monaghan and Ryan Gardiner, who all came up with the idea and worked hard to develop the business plan, won the £500 prize which was kindly donated by sponsor, Faithful+Gould.

Anthony Monaghan, part of the Building Futures team, said: “Building Futures is a recruitment business which offers construction employers the opportunity to directly and conveniently contact students of the built environment through a magazine, this provides students with professional help and discount vouchers, while generating revenue from both sales and advertising.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .