Winner: Speight Engineering

Finalists: Text Mining Solutions; United by Design

AN engineering firm based at Pocklington Industrial Estate proved the sky's the limit for working with higher education institutions.

Judges of the Best Business and Higher Education Link category described Speight Engineering as “a very strong entry” based around the development of a special aircraft that can be piloted by those in a wheelchair.

Despite being a four-man operation working in a relatively small business unit they were able to bring more than 45 students and academics to bear on the project – including one week when all 45 crowded into the unit.

The judges said the scale and ambition of the project is significant and the business has been keen to embrace the new ideas provided by the students.

The business idea came to be when Speight Engineering boss Dean Speight’s friend and fellow pilot suffered a stroke and became a wheelchair-user, meaning he was unable to fly light aircraft.

So Dean and another flying friend, Martin Wiseman of Condor Projects, decided the only answer was to build an aircraft specifically to accommodate a wheelchair and which could be operated by a disabled person. That’s when the link with higher education began.

They approached various universities around the UK and Europe with the idea and Speight engineering and Condor projects were selected as the industrial partner for the annual European Global Product Realisation (EGPR) course for 2013. EGPR brings together 40 students from five universities with an industrial partner to create real new-product prototypes.

Working with students from universities across Europe, Speight Engineering began the project task for the design and optimisation of a fuselage for an airplane to be flown by disabled people, as well as a bespoke electric wheel-chair to dock into the fuselage as the disabled pilot’s seat.

The students worked together mainly through video conferencing, each group given a specific design task ahead of final manufacturing and assembly. In early June they travelled to Speight’s facility during the final workshop week where the components were assembled.

The aircraft has been named Flyable and the docking wheelchair, Wingchair. The fuselage and wingchair design was produced in prototype form, tested and publicly presented and evaluated at City University, London.

Speight Engineering, along with Condor are now planning to build a flying prototype before putting the Flyable and Wingchair designs into production.