Students flaunt their skills with sustainable homes challenge

For the thirteenth year, the Bowater Trust has sponsored an experience-building challenge for Deakin business students.

Established in 1998, the trust kindly provides its income to Deakin Business School to support initiatives that may not be possible under normal funding provisions.

This year, postgraduate students were invited to participate in a challenge that had them exhibiting their hard-earned innovation and sustainability skills to compete for a monetary prize.

The ecokit challenge

This year participating students were asked to develop an expansion strategy to overseas markets for ecokit.

Ecokit is an innovative construction system for high performances, sustainable homes. Using only non-toxic natural materials, they guarantee an energy efficient, healthy home that stays comfortable all year round.

The project

Teams were competitively selected, and the finalists were appointed an academic mentor to support them. Students attended a virtual briefing day led by ecokit. Afterwards, they were required to formulate a solution to present at the finals.

Acknowledgements

We’d like to thank Bowater Trust for their continual support to our students, everyone at ecokit including the managing director Camilla Novotna for providing the challenge.

Thank you to Dr Paul Harrison, Dr Cong Pham, and Tom Keel for providing marketing, international trade, and sustainable building insight respectively at the challenge briefing session, the academic mentors who supported finalist teams and our judges who had the difficult job of deciding the winners.